Unsanctioned Reprisal

by Eddie R. Hicks

  Looking up, he saw the barrel of Durendal’s rifle. He pushed it directly onto Peiun’s head, forcing it back down to the hard, concrete floor. Its warm metallic surface was scorching a small mark on him.

  “Go back to your planet, you fucking alien,” Durendal said.

  Gemini-S’ car was seconds away from impact. Durendal’s finger was seconds away from the trigger. Peiun shut his eyes and waited for what came next.

  A loud thump came, followed by the sound of a car coming to a stop and floating above Peiun’s prone body. He rolled to the side, reacquired his sword, and stood; ready for another fight. What he saw, however, was Durendal’s body laying twenty feet away, unmoving with a dent in his now smoking and sparking armor. Gemini-S bellowed and roared at him to jump into the car with her. She pushed the two dead humans out the car with streams of red pouring out from the front and backs of their heads.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” Gemini-S said while Peiun climbed in. “I’m no supporter of the Hashmedai, but you did help us beat the order. That’s the sole reason I’m trusting you right now.”

  Gemini-S pulled the car back and out of the garage at speeds that well exceeded the limits imposed. “Who were those people, Gemini-S?” Peiun asked her.

  “Call me Sarah,” she said. “And these assholes here? EDF and EISS black ops operatives. You and your dead friend picked the wrong time to be snooping around that merc base. Not that I’m complaining, I’m going to need your help.”

  “With what?”

  “Finding my sister before they do.”

  25 Foster

  XSV Johannes Kepler docked in UNE hangar

  Amicitia Station 14, Arietis system

  October 15, 2118, 11:13 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  It took Blackmar’s team a little over three hours to hull the device, which Foster nicknamed the vortex key, onto the Johannes Kepler. The vortex key was a heavy piece of alien machinery that required an antigravity cart to bring it onto the ship and place it in engineering where Saressea and her team of Radiance engineers worked to wire it into the ship’s power supply.

  After thirty minutes of testing, Saressea confirmed the vortex key was receiving power and operating in the sense that the strange electronics inside were producing heat and waves of psionic energy. That was about it, the device was nothing more than an energy sink and a two metric ton paperweight standing two meters tall.

  On the bridge, Foster and her crew performed last-minute system checks in preparation for their test run, sans Pierce. EVE would have to monitor all data that came in from his station remotely. She faced his empty science officer’s station, his coffee mug still resting on top of it. She refused to remove it and send it back into the galley as with the one in the lab. Pierce leaving those mugs was the last actions he took on the ship.

  “Ops has cleared us,” Odelea reported from her station.

  Foster acknowledged her, taking a seat on her captain’s chair. “Take us out, Chang.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Chang said, tending to the helm controls.

  The wide, hangar bay doors parted, unmasking space, stars, light from the quandary star system, and a number of UNE battleships making a brief flyby. The Johannes Kepler’s entry ramp rose up, shut, and locked as its launch thrusters fired, levitating the ship off the floor while its landing gear retreated back inside. It spun to fly out from the doors, pulled away from the station, and located the area of space where the unopened vortex lay.

  Once clear of all space traffic, the Johannes Kepler vanished in a bolt of light when it engaged its FTL jump sending it on a course to the edge of the Arietis system.

  An hour later, the Johannes Kepler arrived, flashing back into existence, accelerating with thrusters only to approach the region of interest. To those looking at it from the bridge’s view screen, scanners, or a window, it was just a black void full of the stars of the galaxy. To Foster and her shimmering tattoos? There was something more going on.

  “Becca,” Williams said to Foster. “You’re up.”

  She smiled at him, stood, and offered him the captain’s chair. “I’ll be back, Dom, you got the bridge.”

  The vortex key wasn’t going to operate on its own, Foster need to be there to interact with it. How she was going to do that, she hadn’t figured out. That was part of the point of coming out here, to learn how to use the device, if that was even possible.

  Foster arrived in engineering and was greeted by the pulsing emerald and azure glow of the reactors in the backdrop, and Saressea’s multispecies Radiance engineering team diligently working on various computer stations or scanning the vortex key. They all spoke in the Radiance language, something Rivera wouldn’t have minded at all as she spoke it as well. Not seeing Rivera as part of the team put a small damper on her mood. This is something Rivera would have loved to be a part of.

  Doctor Kostelecky joined Foster as she neared the vortex key, holding a number of medical scanning instruments, and verifying the holo screen next to her was operating correctly.

  Foster faced her, smiling. “Ready to watch as I probably melt my insides?”

  Kostelecky pointed at the engineering crew. Their eyes weren’t focused on their holo screens, they were locked onto Foster. “They are going to watch, I am going to monitor your vitals.”

  Foster winced, looking the vortex key up and down and the mist that lifted away from it. Her tattoos’ glows intensified the closer she moved to it, and with that, came a growing uncertainty in her gut. There were no instruction manuals in regard to the operation of the key, no tests performed on human subjects, and no assurance that the power cables on the floor, plugged into the vortex key, would be able to handle what came next. She reached out to touch the surface of the device—

  “Wait!” Saressea called out, running to Foster with her tail wagging with excitement. “Wait, wait, wait. I need to see this with my own eyes.”

  “Told you, you’re entertainment to our alien crew,” Kostelecky said. “Congratulations, Captain.”

  “Hey, Saressea, can I, you know?” Foster asked with her hand just inches away from the device.

  Saressea nodded, the action caused the jewelry attached to her horns to jingle about. “Yep, you’re good.”

  Foster touched the vortex key. Kostelecky scanned her body, monitoring her vitals while Saressea and her team watched. Those were the last things Foster saw, and the rough surface of the vortex key, was the last thing she was able to feel.

  Foster was no longer in her body. She felt like she became one with the universe again. No, not the universe, rather the strange universe that existed within the maelstrom. She felt the presence of the Johannes Kepler drifting before the unopened vortex rift in space. The vortex felt like a box to her, one that had been previously opened, just taped up shut. How does one gain access to what’s inside a box like that? Just pull the tape off, lift up the flaps, and dive in. Reopening the vortex had a similar feeling when she successfully did that.

  The region of space in front of the Johannes Kepler distorted and became the red and magenta storm clouds that instilled people with fear when they saw them. The clouds expanded outward by Foster’s command. She had the power to dictate how small or large the storm expanded. She kept the vortex large enough for the Johannes Kepler to fly through. There was one problem; she wasn’t on the bridge or in her body for that matter. How could she ask the crew to poke around inside? Or remind them they can’t stay in for a long period of time as they would fade away into nothing.

  Breaking her link with the ethereal realm beyond made sense, if only she knew how. It wasn’t like her experience becoming one with the maelstrom, where she was able to drift back and forth into her body. Foster, the vortex key, and the maelstrom were all connected and keeping her mind where it was.

  She saw the Johannes Kepler’s engines fire, pushing it into the vortex of clouds from her out-of-body experience. Williams must have gotten the memo, Foster wasn’t home, and made the call to enter. Once inside
the maelstrom, the Johannes Kepler officially left the known universe, and reentered a new one, one where the laws of physics were different, and worked tirelessly to remove anything that didn’t originate from there.

  The unknown effect of the dark energy that resided inside the maelstrom began its slow process of making the Johannes Kepler vanish, by making tiny layers of its hull and paint job vanish into nothing. Whatever it was that Williams ordered the crew to do, they had to make it quick. Had Blackmar’s team had access to the goo that seemingly protects matter from the maelstrom’s clouds, it would have allowed them to explore longer. But the goo-like substance the Johannes Kepler collected ended up in the hands of UNE researchers elsewhere in the galaxy, and the Empire didn’t share what they managed to collect with anyone.

  Foster had few words to describe what it felt like to watch, from an omnipotent point of view, the Johannes Kepler glide deeper into the universe made of stunning clouds and thunderbolts. The best she could come up with was comparing the experience to being a guardian angel watching over the ship as it passed in and out of the clouds, casting its shadow across those it flew past.

  Behind the Johannes Kepler was a thick batch of clouds, they parted away as if something was passing through it. Foster couldn’t see or sense anything come through. She forced her mind to give that particular buildup of clouds a closer look, nothing.

  The Johannes Kepler’s overshields pulsed with purple light.

  Tachyon beams from an invisible source behind were the source of it.

  The invisible force slowly began to unveil itself with each shot. Foster forced her sights to face the source of the tachyon strikes, and the invisible ship coming into view.

  Foster was back in engineering looking up at the ceiling, and its bright lights. Tremors rippled across the floor, alarms sounded, and the Radiance engineering crew had run back to their stations. A big blast made everyone stumble. She figured a similar one earlier must have knocked her back, thus breaking the connection to the vortex key.

  Kostelecky and Saressea helped Foster back to her feet. “We’re under attack,” Foster said.

  “How did you know?” Saressea asked as she ran back to her terminal.

  “There’s an invisible ship on our starboard side,” Foster said, and approached Saressea from behind observing her screen from over her shoulders. “What do you got?”

  “I got nothing here, the bridge might know better,” Saressea said.

  Foster made a hasty sprint down the corridors, into the bridge full of chaos and crew personnel trying to get the situation under control.

  “Report!” Foster shouted, taking her chair back.

  Williams retreated to a computer station, analyzing a projection of the surrounding area. “There’s a ship we can’t detect, shooting at us!”

  Foster faced their lead shipboard psionic. “Tolukei?”

  “I cannot sense its presence, Captain,” Tolukei said. “This is a very . . . unusual vessel to do such a thing.”

  The Johannes Kepler took another hit from its port and aft. The tachyon beams were cutting the overshield down quickly as indicated by numbers floating in front the viewer.

  “Chang, don’t take us too far from the vortex,” Foster said.

  “That’s the problem, Captain,” Chang said, as he updated the view screen’s contents. The blackness of space stars they entered from was shrinking. “It started closing just before you arrived.”

  Foster gave her tattooed hands a quick look, the same hands that touched the vortex key. “I stopped touching the device . . . it must have broken the connection.”

  “I can get us back to the opening,” Chang said. “But you’ll have to return to engineering to open it back up.”

  Her mind tried to focus and merge with the maelstrom much like her previous time two months ago. Her thoughts left her body, and she saw what remained of the vortex and normal space and time seal shut and fast. It made sense, when she opened the vortex she made the opening large enough to fit the Kepler through. Naturally, when it came time to seal shut, the process would take no longer than a minute or so to complete.

  The vortex had completely closed, there was no wedging it open like she did in the past, her frustrated attempts to do so and repeated cursing in her thoughts, were proof of that. Wedging the vortex open without the vortex key device wasn’t possible. Opening it after it closed required it. She made plans to make note of that, if they got out of this mess alive.

  She returned to her body, also making note of how easy it was do so when not using the vortex key. There were a lot of rules that needed to be followed and memorized when it came to utilizing the maelstrom. She sighed.

  “Do it, Chang,” she said. “Take us to where the vortex was.”

  A swift one-eighty-degree turn set the Johannes Kepler back on course, while its shields and overshields continued to take the brunt of the assault from the invisible ship. The Johannes Kepler traveled a whole six hundred kilometers before a fleet of Draconian bio-ships emerged from the clouds swarming the Johannes Kepler.

  Scores of wyverns flew alongside the organic ships, Charybdis ships within the center of the bio-ship fleet ejected their protective substance into their fleshy hulls, allowing them to remain inside the ethereal realm. It was another reminder of how little time the Johannes Kepler had to escape. The corrosive effect of the clouds ignored shields and psionic barriers, making the Kepler’s hull continue to fade away, one layer at a time.

  The view of the fleet of ships upstaged 80 percent of what could be seen on the view screen. She imagined a similar sight would be shown had they switched to different external cameras. They were trapped, encircled by hundreds of ships, and hundreds more dragons flying alongside.

  “Is it possible we could politely ask them to move aside?” Chang asked as he made the Johannes Kepler come to a full stop. “You know, so we don’t crash into them and die.”

  The invisible ship came about, facing the Johannes Kepler head on as its cloak deactivated, sending distorting waves across the surface of the ship. Once the waves cleared, its true presence was unveiled. The invisible ship was organic like the other Draconian ships. It was smaller, almost the same size as the Johannes Kepler. It was shaped like an angry stingray, armed with a number of tachyon cannons at its front, and the usual cybernetic parts that made a living, breathing ship fly in space.

  With the Johannes Kepler now in the heart of the surrounding fleet, the substance the Charybdis ships released, painted the hull of the Kepler. The looming fear they might vanish into nothing suspended for the time being, replaced with a new concern.

  What do the Draconians plan to do with us next?

  “Well, they don’t want us dead,” Williams said. “They would have shot us down by now.”

  “And not share that goo with us,” Foster added.

  Boyd, Chevallier, Maxwell, LeBoeuf, and Miles barged into the bridge, one by one, uninvited. What displayed on the viewer caused them to stand at the bridge’s entrance with shocked faces.

  “What the hell is going on?” Boyd asked.

  “Everyone, relax,” Foster said. “We’s got this under control.”

  Boyd snorted. “Do you now?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Foster said, scratching her head. “We’s just, uh, figuring out how to deliver Chang’s message.”

  “Politely of course right, Captain?” Chang said to her.

  “Of course.”

  “Whatever you do,” Chevallier said slowly, walking closer to the viewer. “Don’t repeat whatever it is you did that got the Carl Sagan captured. I’d rather not lose another sixty-eight years of my life and have no memory of it happening.”

  “Aye, she’s right,” Miles said. “A maelstrom like this that made the Carl Sagan and Abyssal Sword vanish, ya? What if this is how it happened?”

  “It would explain why they’ve stopped firing,” LeBoeuf said. “And might explain where the missing fleet went.”

  Foster heard Odelea gasp lo
udly, her communication station lit up with flashing lights. “Incoming transmission, Captain.”

  Last time Foster checked, the Johannes Kepler’s communication systems outside of QEC, were only compatible with Union and Imperial ships, since the technology behind them was similar.

  “Really?” Foster said to her. “From who?”

  Odelea checked her holo screens. “It would appear its coming from the lead ship in front of us.” She faced the view screen. “The stealth bio-ship.”

  Foster sat up straight, facing the viewer. “On screen.”

  Two holographic figures appeared on the view screen. Foster’s face damped with sweat. They looked human and wore formfitting dragon armor, with helmets shaped like the head of a dragon. It was the infamous Dragon Knight and Maiden duo.

  “Well, shit, thought they were dead with the last fleet,” Williams said.

  Foster maintained her composure, the opposite of what Chevallier did when the hologram appeared. Boyd and Maxwell were quick to hold her and talk sense into her manic screams. The Dragon Knight and Maiden were the closest to Draconian commanders anyone had faced. Chevallier’s hateful roars toward them, swearing to seek vengeance for her mother’s death were understandable.

  What wasn’t understandable was how they were still alive. Every Draconian ship that entered the Sirius system had either been destroyed or followed the Johannes Kepler into the maelstrom. The destruction of the Charybdis ship, meant the remains of that fleet were trapped within the maelstrom, with no means of reopening the vortex or access to the substance needed to survive. The Dragon Knight and Maiden had to have been on one of the ships, Foster was sure of it. There was no way they could have survived.

  Yet, there they were on a stealth ship with an armada behind them, ready to do something bad, very, very bad. She verified with EVE that the mind shield had been adjusted to only allow psionic use from Tolukei and Nereid—it was. There was no threat of the duo teleporting aboard. Forcing their way aboard physically, that was a different story, one she hoped to not read.