Terra Prime (The Terran Legacy Book 2)

by Rob Dearsley

  Time to go. Dannage climbed from the familiar embrace of the pilot’s chair, his fingers brushing over the worn leather. The chair was one of the few luxuries he’d indulged in when fitting out the old cargo haulier. It was his.

  Out in the hold, he set the gravity to standard down and started packing one of the soft-shell backpacks. “Doc, you coming?”

  A moment later, Vaughn appeared and started prepping his own spacesuit. “Are you sure about this?”

  “All my options are over there,” Dannage said, pausing halfway into his spacesuit to point forward, toward the shipyards.

  Arland, lost to him in shadow. Did he really have a choice here? Not that he was going to tell Vaughn about his planned sojourn. Not yet anyway. He snapped the suit gloves on.

  “Besides,” he continued. “Luc’s over here.”

  Vaughn turned Dannage around checking over the seals in the space suit. “True enough. You’re good.”

  Dannage checked the doc over and the pair of them started down the ramp and into the ancient space station.

  The last time he’d been on a Terran ship – he’d never been on a station – was during the Battle of Pyrite. They’d boarded one of the command ships to find Arland.

  “Cap’n.” Luc’s voice filtered over the helmet coms as he met them inside the station. “You’re back, good. You’ve got to see this. Where’s Arland?” He frowned through the faceplate.

  “Stuck debriefing on Feynman. We had to get back here,” Dannage replied. “What have you found?”

  No time. The darkness rises.

  Luc led them through the station and up a flight of stairs into a large room, its centre dominated by a large circular array of cables and tubes.

  Was that the Neural Sculptor? Dannage was about to ask when Luc waved them over to a bank of windows at the back of the room.

  He moved to the windows, they looked down on a ship in dry-dock. She was elegant, lean looking. Her hull shimmered in the light.

  This was it. The source of the voice, where he had to go. He knew. The ship looked achingly familiar.

  Home.

  For a moment he floated in star-speckled darkness.

  “I’ll start work on the Neural Sculptor,” Vaughn said. “It would be easier with Hale here, but… Where are you going?”

  Dannage slipped through a side door and into a steep stairwell.

  “Captain,” Jax voice filtered through his helmet speakers. “Power levels in the station are building.”

  It was the ship. He could already feel it, the pulse of life beating against his whole body. He was peripherally aware of Luc and Vaughn following him, peppering him with questions. But they were unimportant.

  He had to save Arland from the Darkness. This was the only way.

  The only way.

  “Cap’n.” Luc pulled him around roughly. “Where are we going?”

  “You don’t have to come,” Dannage said.

  “The hells I don’t!”

  The anger behind the words broke through Dannage’s malaise and the world cleared around him. “The voice, it’s here. On that ship. I’ve got to find out what it wants. What it can do. It might be the only way to save everyone.”

  “Save them from what?” Luc asked.

  “How could you…” Dannage belatedly realised Luc hadn’t been there on the surface, hadn’t seen the darkness. “I’m not sure what it is, but it’s bad. It will kill them all if we don’t stop it.”

  The pressure returned to Dannage’s mind, a stifling blanket over his thoughts. “There’s no time. Please, man.” He grabbed Luc’s shoulders pulling them close enough that their helmets touched. “Please, trust me.”

  Luc searched his eyes for a moment. “Always.”

  No time.

  Dannage stepped out into the dry-dock. The Massive Terra ship – the Loki – loomed over them, bigger than any other Terran ship he’d seen. They were but ants in its presence.

  He started up the nearest docking tube and into the ship, the airlock doors reacting to his approach.

  Welcome, Captain.

  Twenty-Three

  (SDF Feynman)

  Arland stumbled back. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening. Stars, please.

  The figure in the isolation chamber stepped toward the doors. Empty darkness swirled behind the armour’s faceplate. Grayson was gone – she had to think like that – it was just the endless darkness in the suit.

  “The hells is that?” Valentine asked from the doorway, his hand moving to his service weapon.

  The guards and Hutch already had their weapons out but not trained on the isolation chamber and the suit within. To the right of the techs’ consoles and the viewing window, the pressure door to the isolation chamber stayed closed.

  Niels looked between Hale and Fyffe. “This is the Darkness, then?”

  Fyffe nodded, her eyes never leaving the armour.

  “Turn the lighting up to max,” Hale snapped.

  The tech looked between Hale and the armoured figure in shock and confusion. The armour strode from view, toward the door.

  “Do it now. The light will stop it.”

  A boom rang through the room. Everyone stopped, their attention and weapons snapping to the isolation chamber entrance. Beside Arland, Fyffe let out a high yip.

  The power armour drove its fist into the isolation door again, the door bowing inward under the force of the attack.

  “It can’t break through the door, can it?” Fyffe asked, taking a step back.

  “Let’s not find out,” Valentine said, reaching around the tech to hit the lighting controls.

  Another crash and the doors buckled, ballistic glass splintering under the force of the blow.

  “Lockdown,” Niels ordered, backing toward the armoury’s entrance.

  “Right.” Valentine grabbed the young tech. “Clear the room, people. Lock it down.”

  The powered armour pried the doors off their runners with a shriek of metal. One of the guard’s guns cracked, the bullet pinging off the armour and knocking it back.

  “No!” Arland grabbed his rifle, pulling it out of line. “If you breach the armour, you’ll let it out.”

  They backed through the armoury as security shutters slammed down, covering the weapons lockers. Arland stepped out into the hallway as heavy security doors slammed down, sealing off the armoury.

  “No way it can get through that,” the tech said, breathing hard, his eyes a little too wide. Arland could empathise. The Darkness sucked at her primal fears. She was a child hiding under the covers. Instinctively she backed away from the doors, into the light of the hallway.

  Hale looked shaken but was already on the problem. “Can we blow it out into space?”

  Valentine shook his head. “Hull’s three decks up, and I’m not kiting that thing through the ship.”

  Arland rounded on them. “We can’t very well leave it there either. It’s only a matter of time before it gets out.”

  “Maybe we can lure it along a secure passage,” Hale suggested.

  Niels and Valentine started discussing the plan. Arland tuned them out, the sounds of crashing from the armoury had died down. In fact, it was suspiciously quiet. She crept toward the door, listening for signs of movement. Nothing.

  “Hey, Hale.” She beckoned the Terran over. “Can you hear anything?”

  Hale waved the others into silence, then cocked her head, listening. Frowning she stepped over to press her ear against the door.

  Finally, she opened her eyes. “No, not from inside.”

  Arland spun on the techs. “Is there another way out?”

  “No,” the older tech replied. “Well there’s the air vents, but the armour wouldn’t fit through them.”

  As long as the darkness stayed trapped in the armour.

  “Just because we can’t hear it, doesn’t mean it’s not there,” Hale said. “It might not be moving.”

  “If there’s a chance it’s waiting in there, we ca
n’t risk opening it up,” Niels said, pacing. He stopped and glared at the door as though he might be able to divine what was going on in there through sheer force of will. “Thermal scanners, optical feeds. Call to the bridge and get me the results ASAP.”

  Arland and the others waited impatiently while the order was relayed to the bridge. Every second they wasted, gave that thing more time to… To what? What did it want?

  She thought on what Hale had said about the Darkness, it would return? Where? Did it just want to get off-planet, out of the system?

  The lights flickered all along the hallway and the gravity fluctuated. What? The lights flickered again and died, plunging them into blackness.

  ◊◊

  Lloyd detached his Hound from the side of the scout cruiser and swung around toward the Feynman. Slater’s hound had ripped a deep gouge in the Scout’s front quarter. They’d got lucky it hadn’t hit one of the missile bays. He still couldn’t quite believe she was gone.

  She was gone. Slater was really gone. He’d never see her again. Lloyd’s vision blurred and he scrubbed his eyes and looked at the flex in his lap. It had to be worth it.

  He angled the fighter toward the Feynman and punched the main engines. At his touch, the hound leapt away from the damaged Scout. Lloyd didn’t want to think about what might be going on with the other Nowhere Scout Cruiser.

  Slater had always been here, with him. He looked over to his wing, the point she would normally occupy, empty. He was alone in the endless night. For the first time in years, he was properly alone out here.

  “Damn-it!” he yelled into the cockpit. “Stars damn-it all.” He beat his frustration impotently against the side of the flight chair.

  The rage left him breathless and spent. Part of him wanted to turn the Hound around and take his anger out on the scout. With half the bridge crew dead and the damage Slater had done, it wouldn’t even be that hard to turn it into a close-formation scrap heap. His hands moved to plot in attack vectors.

  The face of the comms officer appeared in his mind. Fear filling her face. Fear of him.

  He looked down at his hands on the controls, still sticky with blood – not his. Stars, what had he done? He had to get the shutdown code to the Feynman.

  Lloyd opened a com channel. He couldn’t transmit the code, but maybe their techs could do something. “Lloyd to Feynman, come in.”

  Nothing. If only he’d acted sooner. Bloody fool. He glanced at the flex again, reassuring himself he still had a chance to make this right. To keep everyone safe. Whatever else happened he had to be the sheepdog. He had to protect his flock.

  The Feynman’s running lights flickered and died. In a second the ship turned to a dead husk.

  “Ah, hells.” He was too late. He couldn’t bloody protect anyone.

  He diverted aux power to the engines pushing them way up past the redline, sending the Hound arrowing toward the hulk of the Feynman. He just hoped he wasn’t too late.

  ◊◊

  Flashlights flickered on around Arland, bathing the corridor in a pale blue light. It was just normal darkness. She was alright. For now.

  The guards flicked on their weapon lights. Valentine nodded in thanks as someone passed him a clip-on work-light and hooked it to the front of his uniform. Then he pulled out his com-link and started speaking in hushed tones.

  “This way.” Niels led them down the darkened hallways to an emergency locker. He ripped the locking tabs off and pulled equipment out, passing flashlights and clip-on glow-sticks.

  Arland let out a small sigh of relief as she received a flashlight and a handful glow-sticks. She twisted one of the glow-sticks to life and clipped it to the collar of her under-armour top.

  Speaking of which. “What about Dannage? And Luc? We have to get to them.”

  Valentine – now finished on his com – replied, “Don’t worry. Captain Dannage and the Folly disembarked before the power issues. They’re safe, or as safe as anyone can be out here.”

  “He what?” Arland rounded on the Executive Officer. How could Dannage just take off like that, without talking to her? Damn him and his stupidity. Things always got worse when they split up like this. Damn it, why didn’t he even tell her?

  Now wasn’t the time. Gritting her teeth, Arland bit back the frustration and focused on the moment. The ten of them in the pool of light from their torches. In the darkened passageway of one of the SDF’s most powerful superweapons. Trapped with something so alien they couldn’t even guess at its motivations, let alone its objectives.

  More lights popped up as, all around them, SDF officers passed out flashlights, while enlisted officers rushed around with work lights and the chemical glow-sticks. Until the hallway was cast into a soft werelight

  “Sit-rep,” Niels ordered.

  Valentine lowered his com-link. “Engineers are reporting some sort of computer malfunction. All primary systems are either offline or on manual control.”

  “What about Rossini?” Niels asked.

  “I haven’t been able to raise the bridge. Coms are spotty at best.”

  Niels cursed. It was the first time she’d ever heard the Admiral lose his cool. “We need to re-establish contact with the rest of the ship, find out how far this has gone.”

  Arland looked around at the milling SDF men, and the shadows all around them. “What about the Darkness? We need to arm ourselves and find that thing before it gets out.”

  “Yes,” Niels replied. “You, arm yourselves. I’ll go with my guards and see if I can re-establish coms with the bridge.”

  After a quick exchange of farewells, Arland, Fyffe, Hale and Hutch jogged to the armoury door, while Valentine and Niels took the others in search of a working com-link.

  The heavy bulkhead door was still in place. Arland pulled the manual release and Hale started forcing the doors apart.

  Along the dimly lit hallway, SDF officers scurried in what could only be described as regimented chaos.

  Fyffe’s eyes tracked the scurrying officers. “This is creepy as all hells.”

  Arland could sympathise, the goose-flesh on her arms wasn’t just due to the rapidly cooling air. Suppressing a shiver, she aimed her torch into the room, scanning the space. Her senses taught for any sign of movement. After a moment, Hale’s torch joined her own, glinting off the shattered remains of the isolation room door. Arland stepped into the room, scanning the weapons lockers. They remained closed.

  “Wait.” Hale grabbed her arm.

  Hale’s torch beam played over Grayson’s armour – No not Grayson’s anymore. The light caught on the metal components in the digitigrade legs. It stood near the firing range, statue still. The swirling darkness behind faceplate seemed to devour the light from their torches.

  “What’s it doing?” Fyffe asked.

  They crept across the armoury, their backs pressed to the wall. Arland couldn’t look away from the armour, convinced that it would rush them the moment their attention wavered. Her hands traced the cool metal of the bulkhead, feeling her way toward the weapons locker.

  “Got it.” Hutch’s voice was followed by the rattle of the locker’s shutters. He started passing out weapons. “We could pelt it with flashbangs?”

  “Didn’t kill it back on the surface,” Hale said, checking her new shotgun. “Just dissipated it. Any restraint foam? Or that breach foam?”

  It could work, breach foam was already holding it in the suit. If they could trap it in a block of breach foam, they might be able to get it to the nearest airlock. Might. How long could restraint foam hold the armour? She’d bet, not long enough to get it up six decks.

  Arland shrugged into an equipment harness and stuffed stun grenades into the front pockets. Fyffe passed her a compact assault rifle. Being armed again comforted her. The weight of the weapon felt right.

  The armour charged, blindingly fast. Weapons fire roared from Arland’s left, but it was all too little, too late. Its glove clamped around her arm, bands of ice-cold metal, freezing her d
own to her bone.

  Freedom.

  The freshly repaired tendons and muscles in her arm wrenched painfully, tearing a cry from her throat. The rifle clattered from her numb fingers, as she was bowled over backwards.

  The deck slammed into Arland’s back driving the breath from her lungs. The armour loomed above her, the emptiness behind the faceplate filling her vision. It was like a hole in the universe that she was falling into. Endless, bottomless nothing.

  A crack splintered across the armour’s faceplate, then another. The Darkness was trying to get out.

  Hale crashed into the armour, breaking its grip on Arland, and knocking it away. The armour rounded on Hale, but weapons fire slammed into it from another direction.

  “Fire in the hole!”

  Arland tracked the flash-bang stun grenade as it rolled toward them. She turned away, screwing her eyes closed, as the grenade went off.

  Head still buzzing she felt hands – human hands – on her arms, pulling her up and away.

  “Come on, ma-am.”

  She clambered to her feet and looked over to see Hutch and the others scanning the room.

  “Where’s the armour?” she asked.

  Hutch reloaded the grenade launcher, the servos in his arm whirring. “We lost track after the attack.”

  Hale joined them. “Did it try to communicate with you?”

  “It said ‘freedom’. I think it wants to escape, get out of the system.”

  “Maybe the flight deck?” Hutch suggested. “Admiral’s locked down this hull. It would be the only way out.”

  The small group ran for the shuttle bay, their footfalls echoing through the empty hallway. Had the armour killed everyone?

  They reached the shuttle bay. Red lights strobed from beyond the double doors.

  The shadows around them shifted and Arland barely had time to register the clattering of the armour’s footsteps before it hit them. A blow from the armour sent Hutch reeling, the grenade launcher skittering through the double doors into the flight deck.

  Arland followed the grenade launchers, scrambling across the bay. But her weapon was gone, lost to shadow. A quick look around confirmed she was alone in the flight deck. The armour had disappeared.