Unsanctioned Reprisal

by Eddie R. Hicks

  October 13, 2118, 06:59 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  A small video replayed, depicting the sights and sounds of Peiun’s recorded memories. He sat at his desk in his office, reviewing the video on a loop for hours, studying it. The video itself wasn’t a playback of his recorded memories from his HNI, but recorded memories captured from the memory recorder device that sat under the floating holographic screen.

  The audio from the video was briefly upstaged by the sounds of bridge officers speaking to one another. Someone entered his study uninvited. He hit pause on the video playback and faced the opened door leading to the bridge, his first officer and shipboard psionic, Alesyna Interloper, stood before it. Her arms were crossed as she leaned against the frame of the door giving Peiun a fixed stare.

  “How much longer do you intend to make us wait, Captain?” Alesyna said.

  Peiun snorted. “Are you making demands after barging into my study uninvited?”

  “I was merely asking a question.” Alesyna stepped forward, allowing the automatic sliding door to shut, and cut out what little light from the bridge was shining in. The two were shrouded in darkness, the hologram before Peiun and their now red-glowing eyes being the only sources of light. “The crew grows tired, Captain, they need new orders, and the repair crew would love nothing more than to see this battle-scarred vessel return to space now repairs are finally completed.”

  The Rezeki’s Rage nearly met its end more times than Peiun would have liked over a month ago, during the Draconians’ surprise attack against the forces of the Milky Way galaxy. Imperial repair crews worked a great many long hours restoring the ship back to its original state, along with a number of new improvements such as reinforced hull plating, larger fuel tanks, and an updated primary reactor, all gifts from the Imperial throne. The Rezeki’s Rage had become the secret flagship of the Empire. And to think, it was only an anti-capital ship frigate, not a dreadnought, destroyer, heavy cruiser, carrier, or command ship; a frigate.

  Alesyna’s arms remained crossed against her meshed, black dress as she moved closer to Peiun, viewing the contents of the paused video projection. “What are you looking at?” she asked.

  Peiun replayed the video and watched everything he saw during his time on the station. “These are my memories prior to meeting with the Qirak.”

  “Your stare wanders a lot.”

  He chuckled softly, for she was right. “I was surrounded by stunning females.”

  “Human females . . .” Alesyna said drily. “At least I hope they are, if those were Linl—”

  “They were human.”

  “For your sake, I hope so. Should the emperor and empress learn you fancy species from Radiance . . .”

  “They’ll have my head removed?”

  “No, they’ll have your cock and balls removed.”

  Peiun smirked, knowing he was too important to the mission, one personally handed to him by the empress herself. She would never subject him to such punishment for copulating with women from Radiance, other Hashmedai, perhaps, but not him. The emperor though, that was a different story. There was a disconnect between the emperor and empress, to what degree he didn’t know. They never produced heirs to the throne, and the emperor was not aware of the mission he was on, the mission to discover the location of the Hashmedai that vanished around the same time the Carl Sagan did.

  “I want you to copulate with Careiah when you are free,” Alesyna spat, pulling Peiun’s thoughts back into the present.

  “Since when did my first officer and psionic order me around?”

  Using her HNI, Alesyna created a hologram that floated above the palm of her left hand. It was a list that had the names of the Rezeki’s Rage crew with diagrams and numbers next to them. “These are the recorded stress levels of all men and women serving aboard this ship, including those that survived the incursion on our homeworld.”

  Peiun took the hologram, dragging it closer to his face. His HNI did the rest and made its contents appear virtually over his eyesight. “Calm and relaxed, with little to no stress. Impressive.”

  “They all took time off when we were making repairs to address their longing for lust,” Alesyna said. “Those that were worthy bedded our servants; the rest visited the brothels on the station, and those that had mates, returned to visit them. Their needs had been satisfied tenfold. They are now ready for whatever challenges the galaxy wishes to issue to them.”

  Peiun viewed his medical profile and winced at the elevated levels of stress present in him. “All except me.”

  Alesyna pointed at the video playback of his memories, and his wandering male glare. “The direction of your eyes says it all.” The video played to the moment when Peiun arrived at the pub. “No wonder you bumped into that woman.”

  He hit pause at the precise moment the incident occurred. The quality of the projection became blurry, just like his memories of bumping into the mysterious woman. The drink he had probably didn’t help, nor did his tired and stressed mind. He could see her face slightly, her perfectly placed cheekbones, cold, almost emotionless, gaze, dark red eyes, and her long silver hair covering half of her face up.

  He leaned closer to the projection. “Who is she . . .?”

  “If you’d like, I’m sure there are a great many human brothels that will service Hashmedai men,” Alesyna said. “It’s quite clear you don’t fancy women of our kind.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then why the obsession of this human female?”

  “She’s not human,” Peiun said. It caused Alesyna to grimace. “She’s not Linl either, she’s Hashmedai.”

  Alesyna took a closer look at the paused image. He directed her to the woman’s red eyes, and her silver hair that was probably her natural color. “She wears an outfit a human female would wear. The jewelry is also human made; I wouldn’t be surprised if her cosmetics were too.”

  “The bartender insisted she was Hashmedai, and that she followed me in,” Peiun said. “Then she bought me a drink before vanishing.”

  Alesyna took a step back from the projection. “I don’t see how any of this is important.”

  “Our mission is one of secrecy. We must find the Hashmedai the empress entrusted us to.”

  Not that he needed to remind Alesyna of that. Enough clues had appeared as of late to suggest Alesyna knew of this mission, and that it was originally tasked to the former captain and first officer of the Rezeki’s Rage. Why she chose to act as if it was new to her and hide the fact she was able to telepathically speak directly to the empress, was another question.

  “And here we are examining a video of a woman that has nothing to do with it,” Alesyna said.

  “That Qirak gave me the name of a ship as well as information about its crew,” Peiun said. “It’s called the Fortune Runner; its registered port is Gravity City on Morutrin Prime.”

  He used his HNI to transmit a copy of the data file he purchased in regard to the ship, its specifications, and last known location to Alesyna. She viewed and skimmed through the files as it appeared over her vision.

  “It looks like a mercenary ship,” she said.

  “It is, one that had interest in human made tools.”

  She licked her lips. “I see where this is going.”

  “The transport we recovered from New Babylon had a human QEC forced into it.”

  “Right, that’s how the empress knew where to find it,” Alesyna said. “When the humans that recovered it brought it online, it began to transmit.”

  QECs were instant FTL communications as Peiun recalled. However, there was a catch, they were only able to form two-way communication connections. A ship with a QEC could only speak to one other ship it was linked with. The empress learning that the transport he and his team recovered had begun transmitting made sense. The empress mysteriously receiving the transmissions did not, unless she secretly had the corresponding linked QEC.

  “I suspect the Fortune Runner was part of the same mercenary group t
hat used that QEC,” Peiun said. “If so, our missing Hashmedai were either mercenaries, or hired them to take them to Sirius. If we’re going to find them, we need to know who they are, why they left, and if they brought another QEC with them, since the empress refuses to share those details with us.”

  “Possible progress.” The tone of Alesyna’s voice became pleasant. “Forgive me for questioning your mental state, sir. However, I’m still not sure how this Hashmedai woman wearing human attire is important.”

  “When the data package the Qirak gave me was transferred to my HNI, there was an unexpected lag spike.”

  “It’s a small file by the looks, that shouldn’t have created congestion during data transfer.”

  “No, it shouldn’t.” Peiun switched the video screen floating above his desk with another recording, his recorded memories pulled from his HNI. An error message appeared the moment he looked at the mysterious silver-haired woman. “Nor should my HNI’s built-in memory recorder have corrupted data, conveniently during the brief moment I looked at her face.”

  Alesyna’s eyebrow rose. “That’s . . . a convenient time for an error.”

  He allowed the recording to play forward then paused it when, Paul, the bartender, presented him with the drink the silver-haired woman bought him. He zoomed in on the red fruit sitting on top of the beverage. “And this fruit?” Peiun added. “Do you know what the humans call it?”

  Alesyna gave a critical stare. “I believe that is a cherry?”

  “Yes.” Peiun reclined in his chair. “A maraschino cherry.”

  “Maraschino . . . Like the hacker group?”

  Maraschino was a notorious group of hackers that operated in cells across the galaxy. Nobody knew for sure from where they originated. Some say they were former EISS operatives, others say they were Whisper agents exiled from the Radiance Union, others say they were the remains of Anonymous, an old Earth hacktivist group that existed before the human race was uplifted into the stars.

  With the advent of FTL, the UNE wormhole network, and HNI technology, the number of members within the Maraschino hacker group expanded. They began to recruit people from across the galaxy, regardless of species or place of birth. Humans, Hashmedai, Radiance species; it didn’t matter who you were. If you had the skills to crack codes and steal data, the group recruited you and spent much of their time stealing personal data or top-secret government files then selling to the highest bidder.

  “She was trying to send me a sign,” Peiun said, looking at the Maraschino cherry on the projection. “Maraschino gained access to my HNI.”

  “Impossible, we use military grade HNI,” Alesyna said. “Maraschino was offered a large sum of credits by the UNE to hack into military grade implants and failed.”

  “Indeed, our implants are said to possess the highest level of computer security. Only the Dragon Knights were able to interfere with them.”

  “And if your theory is correct, now Maraschino.”

  “Either that . . .” Peiun stood up to take his leave, after powering down the video. “Or Maraschino gave the hacking abilities to the Dragon Knights.”

  “Why would they do such a thing? Assisting the dragons will only aid in the extermination of all life in the galaxy, including them.”

  “Perhaps they struck a deal? Maraschino are also data brokers and sell whatever knowledge they hack to the highest bidder.”

  “And now they may have accessed Imperial knowledge from your head.”

  “Or they intercepted the package the Qirak gave me,” Peiun said as he made his way back to the bridge with Alesyna tailing him. “If that’s the case, then they know we’re searching for the Fortune Runner. So, watch your back, Alesyna, and your neural implants. There might be more of them out there searching for us.”

  Peiun took a seat at the captain’s chair as Alesyna returned to her post at the psionic workstation. He gave the newly recruited and young crew a glance, impressed they were able to attend to their duties despite being fast-tracked through the vigorous Imperial navy training camps. Unlike himself, the new crew were truly new bloods, as in they entered adulthood for the first time. Gene therapy didn’t make them look young, they just were naturally.

  With the huge loss of life the navy took during the Draconians’ incursion, the Empire was forced to alter the assigned career paths all Hashmedai are given at birth, funneling them into the military. The woman at the helm, for example, was assigned the career of a school instructor for the young and had been preparing for that life since she was a child. Now, she was an officer in the Imperial navy, ready to pilot the Rezeki’s Rage into whatever dangers Peiun ordered.

  Conscription as the humans would call it.

  “Contact station ops and inform them we wish to disembark,” Peiun ordered.

  “Understood, Captain,” Nadevina, the woman at the helm, replied. “Heading?”

  “The Morutrin wormhole.”

  5 Foster

  Ruined city streets

  Pictor, Jacobus, Kapteyn’s Star system

  October 13, 2118, 07:41 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  The group pushed out of the shop, happy to finally leave after so many hours, frightened to know that no place on the planet was safe. Miles and his team took point, and slowly walked across the streets, the boots of their exosuits crunching on debris flung away from shattered buildings and homes.

  The trek went on for hours.

  Foster remained behind them with her newly acquired tachyon rifle aimed forward as if she was one of them. Williams and Pierce held onto their side PPG2-1 pistols, though Pierce’s shaky hands made Foster wonder how he’d hold up if things went sideways and he was forced to defend himself. Odelea opted to stand next to Tolukei, having refused to hold a pistol. Something about their trek through the streets had her spooked, almost as if she’d been in this situation before.

  The circling wyverns above swooped down to lynch the eight, Tolukei’s psionic dome encircling them denying the angry wyverns an easy kill. They were safe, for the time being, within the moving psionic dome barrier Tolukei created. The trade-off was, it was all Tolukei was able to do. Like all psionics, the more he used his powers, the weaker and more stressed his brain became.

  100 percent of Tolukei’s psionic energy went into strengthening the dome barrier, as it repeatedly flashed purple with every dive-bomb the wyverns made, or waves of plasma from their breath attacks. The cybernetic wyverns with tachyon cannons were nowhere to be seen, most likely harassing whatever air support the UNE forces had brought.

  Buildings and homes were searched, only unmoving dead were found. Sometimes, the odd Draconian scout soldier was found, they were terminated with extreme prejudice via a fury of bullets travelling near the speed of light from the rifles of the Marines, after they switched their weapons from particle beam to projectile fire mode. Foster looked back at Tolukei’s face; it was flinching, a lot. Teleportation was going to be dicey at best, as, with his combat powers, too much of his psionic energy had been used to keep the barrier up and make it as strong as possible to withstand the attacks of the wyverns.

  Chang’s gonna have to get us off this planet now, no matter what, Tolukei can’t take much more of this, Foster thought while weighing up their options for extraction. Nereid, the other psionic aboard the Johannes Kepler couldn’t perform teleports, and, last time Foster checked, was part of the crew that opted to enter cryo during their month and a half trek, and so was probably getting out now.

  With the search for survivors outside turning up no results, the eight traveled inside a concourse located deep within the mountains. It was an enormous complex approximately four stories in height. Darkness had consumed the concourse as power had long been shut off due to the attacks. Train station platforms lowered their hopes of finding survivors as more mutilated bodies, thanks to the jaws of murdering dragons, made a mess of the place. Men, women, children, nobody was shown mercy.

  Horrific cries for help echoed in the distance. Someone was
alive, and then was not as those cries turned into blood-gargling screams of terror, then silence. The sounds of new movement and struggling were heard. Miles used various military hand gestures to direct his team toward them, Foster and company followed behind.

  An indoor park was the location of the commotion as the eight hid behind benches, trashcans, and nonoperational directory listings. Draconian soldiers paced circles around four wounded and disarmed Marines, and six ash-covered civilians dressed in torn clothes. The civilians and Marines were forced to their knees with their hands behind the back of their heads.

  “Guess those are our survivors,” Foster whispered. “What do you think they want with them?”

  “POWs, maybe?” Valiyev whispered back.

  Foster’s question was answered, when one of the captured Marines was vaporized execution-style from behind.

  “Jesus Christ . . .”

  A woman from the captured civilian colonists was dragged away by two Draconian soldiers as a second Marine was executed by vaporization. Her crying son, no older than five, begged for his mother to be returned. The woman was brought before a drake with blood dripping from its lips. It spat out the bone of a half-eaten human arm. Below it was bits and bloody pieces of what Foster could only imagine was once a city-dwelling colonist.

  A third Marine was selected for execution as the barrel of a tachyon rifle pressed against the back of his head. The woman’s screams became loud as the roars of the hungry drake approached her. It became abundantly clear why the Draconians were concerned about searching for survivors. They needed to feed their starving drakes and wyverns.

  Foster saw enough. So did Miles and his team. They opened fire.

  The two Draconians forcing the woman to stand before the drake were vaporized first; Foster saw to it personally. The commotion forced the remaining Draconians to search and fire upon the eight whom were under the protective grace of Tolukei’s barrier, though its effects were fading rapidly. The captured civilians scattered in fear, most ran to safety, three of them, however, met their ends instantly during the crossfire. There wasn’t anything Foster could do.