Breaking Point

by David Alastair Hayden

  “We have to hold out for seven more minutes,” Tamzin said.

  “Forcefield at twenty-eight percent.”

  “We’re not going to last that long,” Siv said. “We’re just wasting power.”

  “I agree,” Silky replied. “Rerouting all power to the forcefield.”

  The viewscreens went dark. The plasma cannon fell silent. Red emergency lights came on, casting the operations area in a sinister glow.

  “Forcefield up to forty percent.”

  The station shook under a barrage of missiles.

  “Forcefield at thirty-five percent.”

  Tamzin paced, and Siv closed his eyes, trying to breathe and block out all his worry.

  By the time the shields had fallen to two percent, they still had four minutes to go before Tamzin could jump them into wraith space.

  “How long can the structure hold up to this kind of firepower?” Siv asked.

  "Not long enough, sir. I found an access tunnel underground. It doesn't really go anywhere. It's just a passageway for maintenance. Being underground, I think we would be safer there, but…"

  “I can jump us from here,” Tamzin said. “But from below…” She shrugged. “I have no idea. If we get trapped down there, and I can’t make it out, then we’re screwed.”

  “We’re going to have to go off script, Silkster. More of a Raging Command 7 ending than a Kill Hard 12.”

  “Fine,” he snapped.

  “Just for this bit.”

  Tamzin walked over to Galen and stroked his head. “You two might as well be talking in code half the time.”

  “I appreciate the compliment, lady.”

  “Forcefield at zero percent."

  “I guess we’d better signal the Tekk Reapers and officially surrender,” Siv moaned.

  “Already done, sir."

  Galen shifted and muttered. “No! No, we can’t surrender. We have to escape!”

  Tamzin stroked Galen on his forehead. “It’s okay. We’re not actually surrendering.” Silently through their comms, she asked, “We aren’t, right?”

  “Just stalling for time,” Siv said.

  "Unfortunately, we're going to have to make a better show of it, sir."

  The reaper ship unleashed a volley of plasma bolts into the station. Tiles fell from the ceiling, a crack ran down a wall, and the emergency lights flickered.

  “They’re demanding that we exit one at a time, sir. Otherwise, they will destroy the station and piece you together to get what they want.”

  "You two could exit first, and then I could run out and jump us as soon as possible," Tamzin said.

  "That would be great, nut-job. Just one problem. They want you to walk out first."

  Siv relayed that information to Galen who sat upright, some clarity returning to his eyes and voice.

  “They’ll kill her. It’s me they want. Maybe Siv too.”

  “They’re also demanding that we head toward the exit.”

  Tamzin helped Galen up and followed Siv to the exit. "We just need two more minutes."

  Two more plasma bolts struck the building, and the ceiling in the operations room collapsed. The structure above them in the narrow corridor leading to the exit held.

  Siv noted the dots in the locator. Seven Tekk Reapers waited for them outside the door so they would be seized as soon as they went out, making it hard to stall further.

  The building groaned as the reapers fired on it again, and the structural integrity failed.

  “We gotta do something,” Tamzin said.

  Silky started laughing. “We’re such fools. Look how carefully they’re targeting the building and herding us toward the door.”

  “What about it?” Tamzin asked.

  Siv suddenly understood. “We’re so worried, so stressed, and so tired that we didn’t even think this through.”

  “Even I was too occupied with everything that was going on,” Silky said. “They’re bluffing. They won’t destroy the station. With that Thousand Worlds invasion fleet barreling toward us, the reapers don't have time to sift through the rubble to find us. Too much delay and they risk being destroyed by that fleet and not having time to piece Galen's brain into their machinery and transmit the info they need to—"

  The building rocked violently as two blasts struck home. The walls buckled, and the ceiling started collapsing. Siv activated his force-shield, placed it overhead, and bent down. Galen and Tamzin crouched under him, and she wrapped her arms around them, cube out and ready.

  Tiles and stone struck the shield. Metal framework collapsed around them. Tamzin cried out in pain. Debris rained down, and darkness overtook them.

  “Well, I’m not always right,” Silky said.

  44

  Kyralla Vim

  Kyralla’s blood froze with horror, anxiety, and frustration as the warships of the Empire of a Thousand Worlds stormed into the system.

  According to Rosie's projections, the Thousand Worlders would reach the planet just over seven minutes before the Hydrogenists did. But the Hydrogenists weren’t going to the planet. They were heading for a rendezvous point ninety thousand kilometers beyond the planet's farthest moon instead. That’s where Siv, Mitsuki, and Kyralla’s dad would meet them in a stolen troop transport.

  Still, the Thousand Worlders would be able to quickly alter their heading and intercept if they figured out the ruse.

  “Rosie, adjust your projections assuming the Thousand Worlders figure out what’s going on?”

  “That doesn’t seem particularly likely, madam. We can’t penetrate the advanced cloaking technology the Hydrogenists are using. We only know their position and speed based on the last message Silky sent us.”

  “I don’t want to assume anything. A random shuttle out on patrol might catch their attention. Or the Thousand Worlders may have more advanced detection systems than Silky expects.”

  “As you wish, madam.” The locator updated showing three dotted paths. “I’m giving you what I believe are the three most likely scenarios in which they figure things out before reaching orbit around the planet.”

  In all three cases, the Hydrogenists would reach the rendezvous point first, but only by roughly three, eight, or nineteen minutes.

  “How long will it take for the shuttle to dock with the Hydrogenist ship?”

  “Standard docking would take a minimum of twelve minutes if they can get their speeds and trajectories timed up just right, madam. But maybe the Hydrogenist ship has enough space in a loading bay to take on the shuttle. Silky didn’t say if that was the case, but if so, it would make things much faster.”

  “There are no scenarios in which they’ll arrive even sooner?”

  “None that seem at all likely, madam. I really think that by the time the Thousand Worlders get the chance to figure out Silky’s crazy plan, they’ll need well over half an hour to reach the rendezvous point.”

  Kyralla chewed at her lip. She didn’t feel comforted. The Thousand Worlders weren’t the only danger. Kaleeb, the reapers, or one of the other players might sniff out the plan before Siv and the others got to the rendezvous.

  She growled and slammed her fists into the piloting control console. “There has to be something we can do!”

  “Even if we entered the system now, we couldn’t reach them in time to help,” Bishop said.

  “We already did our part, by launching the decoy,” Tekeru reminded her.

  Kyralla looked at the others: Bishop nauseated, Tekeru distant and trembling, Oona nervously fidgeting with the arms of the control chair. Oona’s skin was paler than normal. They were as anxious and frustrated with waiting as she was. She should be the one giving them the pep talk and keeping them calm, not the other way around.

  Tekeru was right. Their decoy may not have fooled any of the big warships, but it had drawn quite a few of the smaller ones away from the planet. That was something.

  “We have no reason to believe that the Thousand Worlders will figure out that Silky and the others
are onboard the shuttle,” Artemisia said aloud over the comm.

  “But what if Kaleeb or the Tekk Reapers figure it out?” Kyralla asked. “If they go after the troop transport the Thousand Worlders are sure to notice something’s up,” Kyralla said.

  “We don’t have to worry about Kaleeb,” Rosie said aloud. “He fell for the decoy, and he’s heading… Oh dear. He’s disappeared from the locator.”

  “Maybe our scans aren’t powerful enough to detect him at this range,” Tekeru said.

  “He does have cloaking technology,” Bishop added, straining to hide the worry from his voice. “Surely, he’s going to use it.”

  Kyralla forced her breathing to slow and tried to calm her desire to rush in, stupidly risking everything, to save her father and her new friends. Siv, Silky, and Mitsuki were pros. They had already succeeded multiple times despite the odds. They could do this.

  Suddenly, Oona jerked to her feet. Her eyes went wide. “Something isn’t right. Something is wrong…” brow furrowed, she shook her head “…very wrong. I don’t like this.”

  “There’s nothing we can do but trust in Silky and his plan,” Artemisia said. “If something comes up, he will know how to make adjustments better than any of us.”

  “This is wrong,” Oona intoned. Still standing, she stared directly ahead, transfixed. “We must help them. We must…we must…”

  “Oona?” Kyralla frowned, noticing her sister’s strange behavior.

  “No, no, no!” Trembling, Oona shook her head violently. “Something bad has happened. And there’s worse…worse to come…far worse. And then darkness. The darkness is coming!”

  The sinister tone of Oona's voice made Kyralla shiver as if an icy hand had touched her bare chest.

  Oona’s eyes rolled back into her head, and she fell back into the command chair. “We have to help. We have to… The darkness…”

  The atmosphere within the bridge changed, taking on the ozone smell and charge you'd expect after a nearby lightning strike. The hairs on Kyralla's arms rose, and the fringes of her black hair fanned out.

  Kyralla got up and lurched toward the command chair. “Oona, whatever you’re doing, stop!”

  Her words warped in the air as if they’d traveled through a coiled tube. The stars on the viewscreen shifted into flickering arcs of light.

  “Oona! Stop it now. Please don’t do anything rash. Don’t let your fears get the better of you. Everything’s going to be okay. Nothing bad will happen.”

  Her words were too late. Oona’s mind was already in another place, impulsively shifting reality around her in response to her panic.

  Kyralla staggered and caught herself on the arms of the command chair. Blazing star-trails weaved around the ship, forming a patterned hyperphasic bubble. Fairy-lights, gold and blue, danced through the bridge. Rosie started to speak but her voice faded, and the HUD blinked out.

  Without touching the manual controls, Oona had shifted the Outworld Ranger into hyperspace. Only this wasn't the ordinary jump experience. Even if her disorientation and the weird experiences around her weren't enough to prove it, the flickering wall of green-tinged energy outside the ship did. Whatever was happening, she was sure it was far from safe, for Oona or the rest of them.

  She touched Oona and called out her name but got no response. The ship’s engines screamed as they ramped up to their max, then double, and then triple. The Outworld Ranger’s frame rattled and creaked. She careened back to the pilot's seat and tried to adjust the speed and check their course, but the ship's AI failed to respond, and the controls were inoperable.

  Twice, something boomed within the ship, and the reverberations rattled Kyralla’s teeth. The lights flickered on and off. The ship’s AI sang out a series of strange, almost nonsensical warnings.

  Kyralla's head swam, and her gut churned. She felt as if she were being tugged in every direction at once. She blinked, and the dimensions of the bridge stretched until it seemed as if she were more than ten meters away from Tekeru at the sensor station. In reality, he should be only a meter away. Meanwhile, Bishop and Oona both appeared to be so distant she could hardly see their faces. In a heartbeat, everything compacted so that she and Tekeru nearly inhabited the same space. Spatial dimensions within the ship warped, again and again.

  Suddenly, everything went silent, and there was nothing. She was aware, yet there was nothing. No sounds or scents. Nothing to see nor touch. No other presences around her. Not even darkness. She was aware of herself and nothing more. And she felt utterly calm. For the first time in weeks, she experienced neither panic nor stress. But she wasn't happy or content either. She merely existed in a state of perfect calm.

  Then her awareness of the physical world roared back, every nerve and every neuron firing within her, burning back into reality. She screamed, along with the others and the ship as well it seemed.

  With a tremendous, thundering boom, the Outworld Ranger reemerged into real space. The ship’s frame clattered and cried out. Sparks spurted out from the consoles and from a floor-level conduit running along the walls. Seeing what would happen a half moment early, Kyralla dived from her seat, and her hands suffered only minor blisters.

  Tekeru Jones thumped back into his seat, clutching his face and crying out in pain. He fell to the floor a moment before flames leaped out from his console. Bishop rolled on the floor, clutching his right arm. Sparks still spurted from his console.

  A fire sprang up in the ceiling, crackling from two separate access panels, and flames roared in the hallway between the bridge and engineering.

  With a whoosh, fire retardant misted into the bridge and throughout the ship, leaving behind a white haze of snow and smoke. Three different alarms blared, and warning lights flashed.

  Kyralla checked on her sister, but Oona seemed unharmed, slumped unconscious in the command chair.

  The engines continue to roar far beyond their full capacity, and the ship vibrated and creaked as if it were a glass sled skidding down a rocky slope. She worried it might break apart.

  Rosie’s boot-up sequence began.

  “Fusion core overheating!” the ship’s AI called out. “Ship’s battery down to sixty-one percent and falling rapidly. I cannot control the ship.”

  They had to slow down and regain control of the ship and soon. But only Oona could stop this madness.

  Kyralla, nursing her scorched hands, staggered over to her.

  “Madam,” Rosie said, her tone a mixture of alarm and amazement, “we rough jumped into the system.”

  Kyralla hadn’t even stopped to consider what had actually happened. “Why was it so much worse than normal?”

  “Because, madam, we rough jumped far, far ahead of the breakpoint. This far in, we should’ve been torn to shreds. We should be dead now.”

  Bishop pulled a first-aid kit from the wall, dosed himself with medibots, and shuffled over to Tekeru whose face appeared to be severely burned on one side.

  “From where we are and traveling at this speed, madam, we’ll reach the planet way ahead of the Hydrogenists and the Thousand Worlders.”

  “If we don’t slow down,” Artemisia said aloud, “we’ll smack into the planet. Kyralla, you must find a way to wake Oona. I cannot get through to her.”

  “Artemisia is correct,” Rosie said over the comm. “However, based on my calculations, the fusion core will explode long before we reach the planet.”

  Kyralla shook her sister. “Oona, wake up, please.”

  According to her HUD, Oona’s vital signs registered as normal. “Octavian, we need a stimulant!”

  Octavian’s distressed beeps sounded over the comm.

  “He’s addressing a critical system malfunction within engineering,” Rosie translated for them. “And Seneca is repairing a wiring fault within engineering before it overloads the plasma cannon array.”

  Bishop tossed an injector to Kyralla. “A half-dose of Awake.” He pulled bandages from the kit. “Maybe that will help.”

  Tek
eru groaned. “Got any painkillers in that kit?”

  The ship shuddered violently.

  "The frame can't take much more of this," Artemisia said. "Either the engines are going to blow, or the ship's going to break apart."

  “And soon,” Rosie added. “The only question is which will go first.”

  Kyralla pressed the injector against Oona’s neck and triggered it. Then she leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “Oona, wake up. We need you.”

  45

  Siv Gendin

  After a moment of darkness and disorientation, Siv found himself covered in dust and debris, scattered bits of metal, ceiling tile, and wiring. His force-shield flickered out, and more wreckage collapsed onto him. His legs were tangled with Tamzin’s, and both of them were piled on top of Galen.

  Siv blinked his eyes clear, only to see amorphous forms swirl through the wan haze and barren hellscape of wraith space.

  “Congratulations, sir.” Silky’s voice crackled with static. “You survived.”

  As Siv dragged himself free from the others, Tamzin screamed. Quickly, he scooted over to her. The reason for her scream was apparent. A hand-length sliver of steel protruded from her right calf.

  He touched her arm. “Tamzin? Are you okay?”

  She looked at her leg and winced. “I’ll live.” She drew several pills from a pouch and popped them into her mouth. “Just don’t brush your leg up against it again.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t know,” Siv apologized. “Silkster, why didn’t you warn me she was badly injured.”

  “I hadn’t scanned her yet, sir. I was focused on Galen and your surroundings, and I’m a bit sluggish here.”

  “We need to get that shard out and bind the wound,” Galen stated with almost perfect clarity.

  "He's not wrong, sir. I see no other significant injuries on you or the others which is a bacchanalian miracle if ever I've seen one.”

  “A bach-what? Wait. Never mind. I’ve got a much better question. Why is Galen so…”

  “Mentally functional? That, sir, is because every neuron in his brain is firing in overdrive. It’s a symptom of severe wraith space sickness.”