Hallowed Nebula

by Eddie R. Hicks

  “Continue the fight!” he demanded.

  “I yield, my mind is weak. I cannot continue,” she said. “You have defeated me.” She saw the glow of his weapon fade, and his feet marched to her. Looking up at him, she added. “I offer myself as your prisoner.” And then looked behind Jainuzei, directly ahead at the other end of the bridge where Foster and Alisha were in conflict. She hoped her efforts were buying Foster enough time.

  “Very well, I accept,” Jainuzei said. “But first . . .”

  He picked up her redeemer, lifting it several inches away from his eyes that gawked at it closely. “We did not have these redeemers when I was a ranger. It will make a fine addition to my collection.”

  There was an explosion from above. It was loud enough to make everyone on the bridge look up to the chamber they fell from. The altar exploded, and its remains came crashing down upon the bridge.

  Karklosea couldn’t see what happened next. It looked as though the altar fell on top of Foster and Alisha. The fact she couldn’t hear any of the two women made it seem like that was exactly what happened.

  Jainuzei ran to the remains of the fallen altar, calling out Alisha’s name, holding Karklosea’s redeemer. If Foster was still alive, she was on her own now.

  74 Foster

  Kur

  Hallowed Nebula Core

  July 30, 2119, 10:30 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  Foster forgot about Alisha’s ability as a fighter. When she wasn’t able to pull the engram away from Foster, she got to her feet and unleashed a fury of kicks. Foster lost the engram and watched it slowly roll toward the edge of the bridge.

  Alisha switched her focus to recover it, Foster tackled her. The two rolled around on top of each other, punching and pulling on each other’s faces, tugging on the flesh. It wasn’t an easy task when taking in the fact both still wore EVA suits. Jainuzei and Karklosea had been dueling further up the bridge, it was a welcome distraction. She had doubts Jainuzei would sit back and allow Foster to drill her fists into his wife’s face.

  The two pulled every dirty trick they could use. Alisha bit Foster’s finger. Probably would have bitten it off if it weren’t for the gloves. Foster spat in her face. Alisha head-butted her. Foster grabbed Alisha’s long hair and pulled, and at one point flung her by a fist full of her hair across the bridge. Alisha called her a whore, Foster called her a bitch, then reached for the engram which by some crazy luck, didn’t roll off the bridge during the struggle.

  She held it up high for Alisha to see.

  “If there’s a shred of humanity left in you,” Alisha said. “You’d drop that.”

  “What’s that?” Foster said, taunting her. “Sorry can’t hear ya over the sound of me winning, twin!”

  “Twin? Ha, you still think we’re doubles?”

  “C’mon, Levesque, you know I’m not the enemy.”

  “If you destroy that engram, I swear . . .”

  “Oh?” Foster looked at the engram she held and pointed at it mockingly. “You mean this engram right here?”

  “Drop it, Foster!”

  “This ship is full of engrams, why is this one so important?”

  “That engram is all that’s left of my daughter, Rebecca,” Alisha said. “This ship, Kur, is a place of the dead. The underworld of the ancient Babylonians, the place Marduk would have brought you if you accepted his offer!”

  Foster was sure Marduk wanted to take her into aether space to become a Goddess . . . Then again, aether space and the maelstroms were one and the same. Was this what he meant? Use it to travel to the nebula and board Kur? Find her father’s engram that somehow ended up here? Then what?

  “I cried for weeks when I learned you turned down Marduk,” Alisha said, slowly stepping toward Foster, keeping her eye on the engram. “You could have taken those gifts; you could have become a Goddess that gifted us with the power to bring back the dead by grabbing their memories stored as engrams on this ship.”

  It was crazy talk. Foster was sure of it. There was no way this one ship could have the memories of everyone who died in psionic form. She could see it happening if certain conditions were met, but for regular people? Not possible, billions of humans alone died over the years humanity existed. You couldn’t fit all their engrams onto Kur, even though it was a huge ship. And what of other races? Hashmedai and Radiance races, were their copied memories stored here as an engram? That’s billions of minds. It wasn’t possible. Alisha was crazy and Marduk was manipulative.

  “Why did you turn it down?” Alisha said. “Why?!”

  “It was the right thing to do,” Foster said, backing away from the distraught woman. “Ain’t no way Marduk was gonna treat people fairly. I saw what he did to the Tiamat-loyal Poniga; Doctor Pierce saw what he did with the Undine. The man was pro-slavery.”

  “I would have taken his offer,” Alisha said, continuing to creep over like a stalker. “Bringing my lovely daughter back, the only person I gave a shit about in life. I would have used my powers as a psionic Goddess to work with Marduk to bring peace to the galaxy and fight him if necessary, like how he fought Tiamat to stop the dragons from taking control. Because, unlike you, Rebecca, I’m not a fucking coward.”

  “So, all the people that have died, the ships destroyed, the damage and chaos, the bodies maimed . . . All this madness so you could bring your child back into this universe?”

  “She wasn’t just any child! She was my fucking daughter and a Nephilim.” Alisha lunged forward, guiding her hand to the engram. Foster’s reflexes pulled it away, seconds before she took it. “So fucking give it to me!”

  “That’s why you needed Lisette,” Foster said. “She was a Nephilim like your kid.” Looking at the engram, Foster made the connection. “You were going to put her mind into her body.”

  “She was the only viable host for her new body,” Alisha said after making another failed attempt to pry the engram from Foster. “I’m not sure of the origins of the Nephilim myself; my guess was my first husband wasn’t human, as with several other men and women living in Montreal. Radiance was, after all, exploring Earth in secret since WWII. Something . . . not human or Radiance, must have infiltrated them and slipped into Earth, bred with humans to create Nephilim.

  “You understand now why I must do this, Rebecca? The universe has been without true Gods and Goddess since you killed Marduk, even when he was trapped in Sirius. We can fix your mistake you made there, just give me the engram back. Let my daughter have a second chance at life and be given the powers of a Goddess to rule over us and bring the peace we need!”

  Foster stopped backpedaling, realizing she was about to back into the fight Karklosea and Jainuzei were having. Alisha was ahead, and to her left and right was the edge of the bridge. She was trapped, and Alisha knew it with the grin she shot.

  She looked down at the white river. She had what Alisha wanted and it didn’t matter now if she lived or died. Alisha couldn’t be allowed to finish this. She was crazy, after effects of the tattoos? Foster hoped not, because if so, she was looking at her future.

  “The engram!” Alisha said as she made her strike, wrestling Foster for it. “Give it to me, right fucking now!”

  “What’s the magic word?”

  “Don’t fuck with me, bitch!”

  “Bzzt, guess again!”

  At some point during the struggle Foster felt her grip of the engram come loose. It was a tug of war for control of the memories and conscience of a dead girl. Foster pivoted her body to the edge of the bridge, while still holding the engram, and briefly debated if leaping off and pulling herself along with Alisha and engram was the only way out of this.

  After a two-second debate, the answer was yes.

  An explosion from above changed all that.

  It was enough to startle Foster, and she lost grip of the engram. Alisha had won but was so wide-eyed at her victory she failed to notice the remains of the altar above crashing onto the bridge. Foster ran past Alisha, who stood with tears running
down her cheek, petting the engram as if it were a pet, oblivious to the rubble that was darkening the section of the bridge the two were on in its shadow.

  The altar’s remains came down with a loud crashing noise and a vibration that sent Foster to the ground. She turned around expecting to see Alisha turned into a meaty pancake but saw nothing but a section of the collapsed altar, and the rest of it fell into the white river. Whatever the river was made of, it didn’t like solid objects as Foster saw other parts of the altar splashdown and vaporize.

  Someone was still alive from the rubble. A gloved hand crawled up from the debris, then a head with Rabuabin horns. Foster ran over, unburying the figure that survived, it was Saressea. She was bloody, and covered in dirt, but alive—

  The gravity yanked on the bridge. Foster saw that the bridge had become damaged from the fall, it was about to break in half from where the altar’s remains fell. She pulled on Saressea’s body, it wasn’t moving. The bridge cracked and she felt it bend.

  Saressea’s EVA suit was caught, forcing Foster to move the rubble away as the bridge slowly came apart. Jainuzei was on the other end, clawing away, searching, and calling Alisha’s name. She had a feeling he wasn’t going to help her out if he recovered her first.

  When Saressea was finally free, Foster pulled her out and away quickly and made it to a stable section of the bridge before the damaged end snapped and plummeted into the river below. She didn’t see Jainuzei. He must have stayed until his section of the bridge crumbled and fell. Karklosea stood ahead, alive and well, having stood at the opposite end of the bridge that was far from the collapse.

  Foster pointed to the top and what remained of the glass floor in the chamber above and hoped she got the message. Saressea wasn’t moving or talking, there was no way for Foster to verbalize that she needed to escape. Karklosea was the only one down below that could take them to safety with a jump port.

  75 Rivera

  XSV Johannes Kepler

  Kur Exterior, Hallowed Nebula Core

  July 30, 2119, 10:55 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  Rivera pushed away from an access panel located on the underside of the Kepler and drifted down to the topside surface of Kur where the Kepler remained. When she powered her magnetic boots, Sarpanit drifted down from the Kepler’s top, continuing her pursuit.

  Behind, Chang, Williams, EVE, Nereid, and Vynei continued to defend the Kepler from the rampaging wyverns. None of them, despite their best efforts, could reach Rivera. She had to get to them, and they had to get back inside and raise the shields. The drones had fallen according to a holo screen that flashed over Rivera’s eyes. This was their last stand to hold the fort. If they and or the Kepler was lost, Foster and her team had no means of coming home.

  Slowly, Rivera marched away from the aft underside section of the Kepler across the exterior of Kur, making her way to her friends and the lowered entry ramp. Sarpanit followed, Rivera adjusted her path hoping the android would. Her plan wasn’t going to work if she didn’t.

  “I’m really enjoying this new body you gave me,” Sarpanit said. “Had the Carl Sagan had one, things would have been much different when I first took control of that ship.”

  It was hard to believe after all this time, Sarpanit was originally the Carl Sagan’s EVE AI. It got copied and reprogrammed by Marduk, evidently receiving Sarpanit’s engram memories. It jumped into Foster’s EAD and was brought back to the ship.

  Had Rivera, back during the Sirius expedition, known this would happen, she would have deleted it with or without Foster’s approval. Emmanuel would still be alive. Rivera’s team would be too, and they all had a family. It was the reason the salvage took so long, they stopped to visit them after the Draconian attacks. And for what? To die to a vengeful AI Goddess. Deleting the data crystal when she had the chance, that’s all she needed to do.

  Sarpanit’s magnetic footsteps guided her on the path Rivera needed her to be on. Rivera looked up at the underside of the Kepler the two were under. Sarpanit was almost in range. Just a few more steps. Two more steps. One more step.

  Rivera floated to her knees and made a bowing motion.

  “Marduk is eternal,” Rivera said.

  Sarpanit stopped and grinned, looking down at her. “You’re just trying to deceive me.”

  “I’m being truthful.”

  “Rivera?” Williams said over the comm line. “We’re almost in the clear here, what the fuck are you doing?”

  “Go back inside, guys,” Rivera said. “We can’t fight her, let’s cut our losses.”

  “What the fuck? No!” Williams shouted. “We’re coming for you; just hold on we’re almost done with this last dragon.”

  Sarpanit took a step forward. Rivera remotely established a communication link with the Kepler’s bridge. “Pierce! Do it now!”

  The Kepler’s landing and launch thrusters activated.

  A pillar of blue- and white-hot flares shot down upon Sarpanit, who stood directly under one of the thrusters. The heat shattered her shields and then turned the android’s body into a charred metallic one that remained clinging to the exterior of Kur. She had Pierce back on the bridge shut down the thrusters before the heat got to her or the rest, and then took a glance at what remained of Sarpanit.

  Rivera tapped her finger on Sarpanit’s melted head, nothing happened, the blackened android was just a piece of melted rubble still attached to the surface via magnets. She was glad Sarpanit wasn’t monitoring the text-only message Rivera had sent to Pierce beforehand of her plan or noticed the quick adjustments she made to the thrusters.

  “I really hope you were joking about that Marduk stuff,” Chang said to Rivera as she rejoined with the group.

  She laughed. “Of course . . .”

  The remains of the last wyvern drifted away, adding to the pile of wings and bullet-ridden wyverns floating around the Kepler, spewing orbs of yellow in every direction. Williams, Chang, and Vynei made triumphant sounds as they proceeded up the entry ramp, EVE, the legit one followed behind saying nothing. And Nereid? Rivera saw her look back at the dead dragons after she finished restoring the thrusters to their normal settings. Nereid looked sad, disturbed, and kept silent, and then kept to herself even after they all returned inside.

  Rivera tried talking to her. Nereid shrugged her off. There was talk about how Nereid might snap one day and betray the crew because her devotion to Tiamat forced it. As far as Rivera was concerned, her devotion to Tiamat wasn’t going to force it, it was going to be the continuous orders the crew gave her to defend against the dragons.

  “Foster to Kepler,” Foster’s voice played over the bridge’s speakers.

  “Go ahead, Captain,” Williams said.

  “We’re finished here . . .” Foster said grimly. “Get ready to receive the survivors . . .”

  Survivors. Someone didn’t make it.

  76 Foster

  Kur

  Hallowed Nebula Core

  July 30, 2119, 10:38 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  “Where’s Lisette?” Foster said.

  “I can’t find her,” Chevallier said.

  Foster had arrived in the corridor leading to the chamber with the aid of Karklosea’s jump port. In her arms was Saressea’s stiff body, behind her was the now floorless chamber and a destroyed altar.

  Chevallier and her EDF team hunkered down behind barricades made of psionic energy by LeBoeuf, taking turns exchanging fire with the Draconians beyond. Miles had joined them, so did Penelope, having stolen one of the SOM magnetic rifles. Foster would have helped as well had she not lost her tachyon rifle. Thankfully she had a spare on the Kepler, assuming it was still in one piece.

  “Did anyone see where Lisette went?” she asked.

  “She went with Saressea into the altar,” Chevallier said. “That’s the last we saw her.”

  “I can’t pick up any other HNI signals,” Penelope said.

  “Maybe the Dragon Knights are scrambling them?” Odelea suggested.

 
“Then why y’all standing?” Foster said. “Ain’t nobody left these chambers, right? And I know only Saressea came out of that crashing altar.”

  Foster placed Saressea’s body on the ground running back to look at the chamber. There was no place else to stand other than the broken-in-half bridge below. The Rezeki’s Rage had reported their shields had dropped, and the Prometheus wasn’t far off. Williams said the Kepler had beaten off a group of wyverns but had another wave coming in. Meanwhile, the Draconian soldiers ahead, with their blazing tachyon rifles had their numbers grow in size. They were entering from other entrances to Kur and were not going to let anyone stop them from resurrecting Tiamat. Lisette was gone, and they were running out of time. They had to leave.

  Foster returned to the group and noticed Saressea’s breathing had stopped. She wanted to perform CPR, but that would require her to pull Saressea out from the EVA suit first while ducking her head from weapons fire and the advancing Draconians.

  Being a captain was all fun and games until you had to make a very hard decision. And hope it was the right one.

  Foster’s team gathered with Tolukei. Chevallier’s team gathered around LeBoeuf. Everyone with a gun laid down as much fire into the corridors, hoping to reduce the pressure and stress on LeBoeuf and Tolukei’s minds. Miles stood ahead of Tolukei acting as a human shield, with the aid of his shields, which were at great risk of dropping with each shot. Chevallier and Maxwell did the same for LeBoeuf. Foster held Saressea’s body in her arms, wishing the teleport would hurry, and kept her eyes on the chamber doors, expecting Lisette to run in at the last minute.

  The Draconian numbers increased, laying on too much weapons fire. Odelea offered to take care of Saressea’s body, allowing Foster to swipe a magnetic rifle off the floor and join everyone on the frontlines. She fired the Radiance made weapon, laying down as much pressure into the incoming Draconians, while Odelea peeled off Saressea’s EVA and began CPR.