2 · Hyperspace
The ready room of the Drenard Headquarters buzzed with the accented whispers of a dozen alien races. They stood in five lines and prepared themselves for one final raid across hyperspace. Cole Mendon?a stood amongst them, wearing the same sort of white combat suit as the others and nervously gripping his buckblade. He stared down at his feet, at the dull path worn into the steel beneath them, the sign of many thousands of boots shuffling forward on previous raids.
“Good luck,” someone behind him said.
Cole turned and nodded mutely to Larken, his group’s translator. Larken squeezed Cole’s shoulder, then patted it twice.
Cole glanced over at Mortimor, who had just given a last series of instructions to the five squads before joining the group lined up beside his.
“I didn’t know you were going,” Cole said.
“Ran out of people who speak Bern.” Mortimor nodded toward the row of hyperdrive platforms in front of them where the five pilots sat, their arms wrapped around their shins. “Now pay attention,” Mortimor said.
Cole nodded and focused on the platforms. A moment later, the light over each pilot switched from red to green. There was a loud beeping sound from the row of control consoles followed by a pop as the five large cages in the back of the room—cages Cole had designed and helped build—vanished.
A moment later, the pilots followed, winking out of existence with a muted pop, as air from the room crashed together to fill the void they had left behind. The row of navigators jumped up to take their place on the platforms. They turned, fell to their butts and tucked their chins, only having three seconds between jumps to prepare themselves.
Cole glanced over at the navigator in Mortimor’s line. A lock of bright red hair spilled out of Penny’s hood as she settled into place. Her eyes met Cole’s for a brief moment just before her head went down. There was a soft pop, and she too disappeared from the room, leaving Cole awash in a tremble of nerves.
It was all happening so fast.
Cole’s heart missed a beat as he took a step forward, shuffling the steel decking ever duller. He chanced a glance to the side at the neighboring line. Mortimor was looking straight ahead, the man’s beard and combat hood hiding whatever he was thinking. Cole wished he’d known Molly’s old man was going on the raid. He would’ve switched places with someone to be in Mortimor’s group and been able to keep an eye on him—
The lines surged forward again. Cole felt Larken’s hand on his back, pushing him along. Suddenly, Cole found himself beside the console operator, right in front of the jump platform. Marx, the Callite swordsman who would help Cole clear the Bern ship’s corridors, plopped down on the platform. The alien looked up and time slowed down to a crawl. Cole watched Marx’s arms wrap around his shins, saw the man’s scaly chin tuck against his knees—and then the alien was gone. More air crashed together so close, Cole felt the sucking breeze on his cheeks. He jumped up to the platform and sat down as quickly as he could, then spun around to face what he hoped would be an exit once he popped inside the steel cage. In the back of his mind, he counted:
Three.
He grabbed his shins and tucked his head, squeezing his buckblade as tightly as he dared without crushing it. A thousand sword fighting tips from his practice sessions with Penny flashed through his mind.
Two.
A sickening sensation clawed at Cole’s stomach as he wondered if the raid was a mistake. He tried to remember what the Seer had said about free will, but then the silent counting in his mind clicked down to—
One.
?? 2 ??
The ready room of the Underground Headquarters disappeared. One moment, Larken was standing before him, looking down at his sword and waiting his turn. The next, Cole was seeing the interior of a metal box. He fell half a meter out of the air and landed on his ass, smacking solid steel. Cole felt a rush of adrenaline—the raid had really begun! He sprang forward and launched himself through the clean hole the pilot had cut in the side of the cage. It was a couple meters to the ship’s deck below. Cole hit the plating in a roll and looked around.
Marx stood off to starboard, his buckblade drawn. The Callite turned and glanced over his shoulder at Cole.
“Go,” the alien said. Marx spun and ran down the corridor, looking for Bern crewmen to kill. Up ahead, Cole could hear the pilot and navigator stomping forward to secure the cockpit. Cole felt a sick lurch in his stomach as he imagined where they were: His squad had just jumped across hyperspace and into the belly of an enemy ship flying in formation with thousands of other enemy ships. He looked once more to Marx, but the Callite was already out of sight, disappearing around a bend in the corridor. Cole remembered his duty, that he should be running in the opposite direction. He spun and headed off, catching a glimpse of Larken as the translator leapt out of the suspended cage.
The image of the metal box stuck with Cole as he ran aft. Protruding from a solid bulkhead—twisted sheets of metal peeled back from the expanding grav plates—it had worked exactly as he’d imagined. No matter where the box had ended up in hyperspace, those expanding sheets of steel in its center would’ve provided a safe pocket of emptiness for them to arrive inside of. The first part of his plan had worked flawlessly. Cole felt a surge of hope wash away some of his anxiety. He was that much closer to Molly.
As he ran down the ship’s corridor—his thoughts straying from his duty—Cole finally remembered to flick off the safety on his buckblade. He reminded himself of the grisly task that lay before him: he would need to kill without hesitation.
He ducked through a passageway, the thick airtight door left open and secured to the bulkhead. There was a funny script of writing above the hatch in neat red ink, the shape and style of the language resembling nothing Cole had ever seen. The peculiar writing stood in stark contrast to the rest of his surroundings. Otherwise, Cole could’ve been running through a Navy ship. The size of the passageways, the spacing from ceiling to floor, even the height and ergonomics of the control pods on the walls—they were all identical to a Human craft.
Cole turned a corner and was reminded why this was so. The figure strolling down the hallway in his direction looked perfectly Human. Even the confusion and shock on the Bern’s face were familiar, and much easier to read than the red script had been.
The Bern crewman fumbled at his belt—whether for gun or radio or what else, Cole didn’t wait to find out. He continued his run and flicked on his buckblade, unleashing the molecule-wide wire made stiff by the hilt’s exotic magnetic field. He swung up in an angle four as the Bern pulled something from his hip—
The Bern’s head fell sideways, removed from his torso in a slanted wound from neck to ear. Cole danced out of the way, cursing himself for being so sloppy, and not just for the fountain of gore erupting from the Bern’s neck and splattering the wall, but the poor reflex of going for a soft spot. He needed to remember the power of the weapon he was holding. The goal was to aim for the torso, or anything difficult to miss or hard for the enemy to pull out of the way. There was no such thing as a “soft spot” for the buckblade. There were just spots. Any spot would do.
As the Bern’s body finished slumping to the ground, Cole gathered himself together. He took one look at his artificial arm, remembering the stakes. He then turned and ran deeper into the ship, stopping to check every turn, nook, and corridor.
He took his next two victims by surprise. Both deaths were uniquely horrific, but neither felt as personal as he’d feared they would. The blade slid through their bodies, and even some of the ship’s equipment that got in the way, without an ounce of resistance. It felt more like casting a spell on someone from a distance than a physical strike. All he did was wave a wand—and a body was split in two.
Cole took every right turn as he headed aft to make sure he covered the entire deck. He went through a dozen Bern in the process. He tried to remember Mortimor’s warning to do minimal damage to the ship with follow-throughs, a real concern when fighting in close quarters with buckblades. An accidental swipe could easily destroy something crucial in a ship they needed in order to escape hyperspace.
Rounding another corner, Cole nearly collided with Marx, who was jogging the other direction. Both swordsmen flinched, readying to strike—but they were able to restrain themselves. They stood in the passageway panting, splattered with alien blood, holding their invisible swords and smiling grimly at each other.
“Any stairs or lifts?” Cole asked, out of breath more from the adrenaline dump than the long run.
“No,” Marx said, his English accented with the coughing sound of a Callite. “Looks like a single deck design. Lucky we didn’t end up in mechanical spaces.” Marx nodded the direction Cole had come from. “Let’s get to the cockpit. Sweep your side again.”
Cole gave Marx a thumbs-up, then wondered if the Callite even knew how to interpret the gesture. “Gotcha,” he said, and ran off the same way he’d arrived. Once again, he couldn’t believe how well the raid was going.
?? 1 ??
The last thing Penny saw of the ready room was Cole, the poor boy’s face drenched in nerves. Then she closed her eyes and waited for the drop in her stomach, followed by the crashing down to the deck.
As soon as her butt hit cold steel, she launched forward, expecting to find a clean hole cut in the side of the cage. What she found instead was Jym, her pilot, pressed up against one wall and cursing at his clearly malfunctioning buckblade.
Penny felt a wave of panic; she barely remembered to jump to the side and get out of the way of her next squad mate, but self-preservation moved her just in time. She powered up her own blade and pushed it through the cage wall. As she began making a wide circle through the solid steel, she heard a pop of air behind her, followed by the sound of Stella gasping with alarm at the sight of the cramped cube, a cube that should’ve been empty.
Penny turned to warn her, to drag her out of the way, but it was too late. A few heartbeats later, Gregury jumped in and fused with Stella. The squadmates became a sickening, two-headed monster—half Serral and half Human. Screams of raw agony blared out of them both—fading to gruesome moans as intertwined organs ceased to function.
Jym threw down his sword and grabbed Stella’s boots. He threw his hands up, flipping the tangled mass of limbs backwards and out of the way. Penny pressed herself to the wall as Mortimor fell out of the air in a tight ball, missing by inches having some part of him fused with one of the others.
The screaming from Stella and Gregury fell silent. Penny thought about putting them out of their misery with her blade, but they were already dead before she could steel herself. Jym, the group’s pilot and therefore responsible for cutting an exit out of the box, cursed and kicked his dead buckblade in disgust.
Mortimor scanned the tight confines of the box and seemed to take it all in. He reached down and picked up one of the dropped swords from the two dead squadmates. “Jym, you go forward alone and clear the cockpit.” He handed him the retrieved sword. “Penny, you take Starboard. I’ll clear Port. Go!”
Penny nodded. Translator and navigator had instantly become swordsmen, she and Mortimor reverting to older, more comfortable roles. She finished her cut in the wall and kicked the center of the crude circle. The heavy steel fell away, exposing the Bern ship’s decking half a meter above the floor of the box. Two sets of legs stood there—Bern crewmen studying the strange cube that had appeared inside their starship. Penny swiped through all four limbs with a wave of her hand. She jumped out to the deck and silenced the screaming forms before they hit the ground.
It was a messy start, blood slicking the deck around the box, but Penny didn’t pause to help the others. She ran aft along the port side, thinking of the look on Stella’s face before Gregury had jumped in, and how different she had looked just moments later with her wide, lifeless eyes. The horrific sight—the suddenness of the switch from life to death—gave Penny fuel for moving swiftly through the craft, slicing down all the bewildered Bern who stood in her way.
?? 5 ??
The windshield of the impounded Bern craft was dusted in a never ending torrent of snowflakes. The flurries impacted right in front of her and slid to the side, gathering in miniature drifts. The sight of the stuff, coupled with the harsh whiteness beyond, made it easier to fly by the instruments than stare into the mesmerizing sameness.
And so Anlyn Hooo—Drenard Princess, member of the Great Circle— kept her head down as she piloted the Bern craft through hyperspace. It had been two weeks to the day. Two weeks of exhausting one-hour shifts, causing her to develop a powerful antipathy to the sight of the relentless snow outside. She preferred to rest her chin on her chest and monitor beneath drooping eyelids their ship’s position within the vast invasion fleet, following everything from the instrument readouts.
Edison snored beside her in his gruff and intermittent way. The massive Glemot, her co-pilot and fiancé, was fast asleep with the radio mic clutched in his paws. Anlyn checked the ship’s clock, dreading the answer to her weary and eternal question: How much time left on my shift?
Forty minutes.
It filled Anlyn with guilt and dread. Dread for the perceived hours and days it would take for those forty minutes to tick down and guilt for knowing that Edison would have to take over for her once they did.
Another ship passed through the open rift ahead, and the fleet adjusted accordingly. Anlyn felt a rush of adrenaline as she leaned forward, gripped the control stick, and matched the precise movements of the Bern. It took every ounce of her will to fly like a fresh pilot, alert and ready, rather than the half-dead thing she had become. A thousand times over the past weeks, Anlyn had foreseen the end to hers and Edison’s endurance: There would be a wobble and a gradual falling out of formation. Barked orders full of suspicion would follow, and Edison’s sleep-deprived lies would not wash them away. The final stage would be missiles and plasma bolts to end their fitful ruse—
A loud bang in the rear of their ship interrupted Anlyn’s thoughts. Edison bolted upright, the radio coming to his mouth in reflex. He scanned the dash before looking to Anlyn in confusion.
“Diagnose!” he said in his native English.
Anlyn shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. She tried to force the cobwebs aside and think clearly. “It sounded mechanical, but none of the gauges have so much as twitched.” She looked to the SADAR, but it was nearly useless in the driving snow. “The fleet is moving again. Maybe it was a collision?”
Edison began to rise from his seat to go inspect the cause of the noise, but Anlyn placed a hand on his chest and attempted to push him back.
“I can’t speak Bern,” she reminded him. She glanced at the mic in his hand. “Stay here in case the fleet calls. I’ll go see what it was.”
She unbuckled her harness while Edison yawned—his long furry arms running out of room for a decent stretch. She ducked under his elbow and padded out of the cockpit on wobbly legs, heading aft. In her sleepy pilot brain, she went over all the possible causes for the loud, metallic sound. A ceiling panel could’ve fallen loose and slammed into the decking. A storage cabinet could’ve vibrated off its rivets. One of the generators could’ve thrown a rod.
But then she heard something else, something easier to recognize. It was a thumping sound, rhythmic, just like the footfalls of someone running.
And it was getting louder.
?? 2 ??
Cole finished his second sweep of the port side, seeing nothing more than the messes he had left behind the first time. He reached the cockpit after Marx and helped the large Callite drag Bern bodies out of the way. It looked like the pilot and co-pilot had cut down several Bern in taking over control of the ship.
Despite the design of his Underground boots, made to grip through blood and ice, Cole found himself slipping and sliding as he drug a Bern’s torso out of the cockpit’s narrow hallway. There was a gruesome normalcy to the task, like arranging furniture, that nearly made Cole gag. He forced himself to not look the dead man in the eye as he added him to a pile Marx had already started. The Callite threw a plastic tarp over the figures while Cole looked for something to mop up the blood. There was no way they could work with such a thick pool of it right in the cockpit. He pulled a jacket off one of the Bern crewmen, looking away from the Human-like face as he did so. He threw the jacket down into the spilled gore and pushed it around with his boot, trying to mop a path through the mess.
“Ryke was right about the windshields,” Cole heard the navigator say. “They’re already darkened, so we won’t be needing our goggles.”
“Keep em around your necks anyway,” someone else in the cockpit barked.
A third voice burst out in a strange language, causing Cole to pause from his dirty work and scramble for his buckblade. The cadence and inflection of the words sounded similar to what several Bern crewmen had been shouting before Cole had cut them down.
“Shhh!” somebody hissed. “Complete silence!”
Cole left the soiled jacket wadded up against the bulkhead and stuck his head in the cockpit. He watched as Larken, the squad translator, leaned forward from one of the seats and spoke foreign words—the same type of words—into the mic. Everyone froze, anxious and tense.
When he stopped speaking, a voice came through the radio again. Larken held his eyes closed and turned to face the pilot. He nodded now and then as the rapid Bern continued.
“What was that about?” the pilot asked as soon as the voice fell silent.
“They want us to check for any problems. One of the other ships called something in, and now they won’t respond.”
“You want me to go check?” the navigator asked, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder.
“Moron,” the pilot said. “We’re the problem.”
“One of the other squads must be in trouble,” Cole said.
“That’s why we sent five groups,” the pilot muttered. He turned to the navigator. “Call HQ on the carrier frequency, but keep it short. Just give them our velocity and the coordinates for our cargo bay, one meter off the deck. Tell them we’re secure and can hold as much as they can send.”
The navigator nodded and pulled his long-wave radio from his pack.
The pilot looked over his shoulder. “Marx, you and Cole head back to the cargo bay and coordinate our arrivals. Let’s pack as much as we can into this puppy, just in case we’re the only ones who make it through to the other side.”
“Yes, sir,” Marx said from behind Cole. The Callite stomped aft through the thin skim of drying blood.
Cole took off after him, his thoughts divided between how well his squad had done on their portion of the raid—and on which of the other groups had run into trouble.
?? 1 ??
Penny raced through the ship’s corridors, the dying screams of the last Bern crewman echoing in her ears. She slowed to round a bend in the passageway, then found herself in the aftermost section, the rumble of powerful thrusters audible through the thick bulkhead.
The sound intensified as a door opened. A Bern engineer stepped out, his gray coveralls spotted with grease stains. Penny sliced him in half before he could even register her presence. She watched the two pieces of meat fall to the deck, strings of interior organs spilling out in a thick soup. She studied the odd arrangement, the fleshy interior, and felt more curiosity than horror.
A rhythmic clanging rang out over the roar from the open thruster room. Penny kicked the door shut to hear better. It was footsteps. Someone running. She prepared her blade just as Mortimor jogged around the corner and came to a panting stop.
“You okay?” he asked. He pulled his blood-specked hood back and ran his fingers through his graying hair.
Penny nodded and lowered her sword. “I think this is the last—”
Before she could finish the sentence, Penny flew into the air and slammed into the rear bulkhead. Mortimor followed, his limbs flying out for balance. Gravity returned, and they both fell to the deck. Penny felt her weight lessen again, like the ship was dropping altitude, but the grav panels should’ve more than compensated for any maneuvering. She looked across at Mortimor, her hands splayed wide and her fingers digging into the grating on the floor.
“The cockpit!” Mortimor yelled.
Penny pushed herself to her feet. The whine of the thrusters in the next room suddenly lowered in pitch—and then the engines began screaming higher and harder than before. Something was wrong. She took off, churning up the meters back to the cockpit, her legs hammering away at the artificial gravity, her mind willing it to last.
?? 5 ??
The pounding of the approaching footsteps came faster than Anlyn could retreat. She stood, frozen in place, comprehending the noise but not understanding how it was possible. When the Bern rounded the corner, dressed in a suit of all-white, she collapsed in stark horror, her already fatigued legs turning to soup. Her brain boiled with confusion and fear. She scrambled back from the figure and tried to scream for Edison, but her voice wouldn’t heed her. In the back of her muddy mind, she finally matched up the banging sound she had heard with a ship locking to theirs. She imagined a squad of Bern troopers boarding their craft. She wondered what mistake she’d made to end their ruse.
We’re doomed, Anlyn thought. The figure approached, his eyes wide and his hands clenched together high over his head. Someone else ran up behind the Bern—some unknown race—also with his hands double-gripping an unseen device.
“What are you waiting on?” the alien in the back yelled.
In some fuzzy corner of Anlyn’s mind, she realized he had yelled it in English. This alien, also in all white, tried to get around the Bern, pushing him to the side.
“It’s a Drenard, man!” The Bern held the alien back and looked toward Anlyn. “Maybe she’s like a sex slave or something.”
“Sex slave? You stay away!” Anlyn yelled. She kicked her feet at the decking in an attempt to scramble toward the cockpit.
“Stop moving,” the Bern said. He leveled some sort of object at her.
“Wait!” The unknown alien reached for the Bern ahead of him. “She speaks English?”
Another Bern ran up behind the other two, his uniform identical.
“What the hell is going on here?” he asked. He spotted Anlyn. “What the flank?” He spoke some Bern to her while he reached for something on his belt.
“She speaks English,” the other Bern said over his shoulder. He looked again to Anlyn, his eyes narrowed warily as he stepped forward. “Where’s the rest of your crew?” he asked her.
“Screw this diplomacy,” the other Bern said. “We need to secure the cockpit!”
All three figures moved closer—and then the faces of the two Bern turned as white as their suits. Their eyes bulged as they gaped high over Anlyn’s head.
“Desist!” Edison roared from behind her. He followed with something equally terse and forceful in Bern.
Anlyn turned to see her fiancé reared up, the fur along his arms waving as if in a stiff breeze. She scrambled away from the three figures and tried to get to the other side of Edison, eager to put his imposing bulk between herself and this strange threat that had invaded their ship.
?? 1 ??
Penny sprinted toward the cockpit, fearful of the mechanical failure that had lifted her and Mortimor off their feet before slamming them to the deck. When she reached the ship’s cargo bay, she noticed a bright light flooding down the corridor from the cockpit: It was the telltale flash of hyperspace’s unshielded and blinding photons.
Penny pulled her goggles out of her collar and forced them in place with one hand. She heard the drone of a steady wind and felt the air in the ship grew colder as she got closer. She stepped over two dead Bern, their guts spilled and dripping through the deck grating. The ship’s grav panels lurched again, sending her sideways into another bulkhead. Penny bounced off and staggered forward, calling for Jym, their group’s pilot. A flurry of snow swirled around her, melting in the air.
“Up here!” Jym yelled. Penny ducked into the cockpit and saw the Pheron pilot peering back from one of the flightseats. Beyond him, the ship’s canopy had been blown wide open, letting in the snow and light. The fur on Jym’s face whipped around in the breeze, but even that, coupled with his black goggles, couldn’t hide all the alien’s panic.
Penny ran toward the nav seat to help with the flight controls, then saw the spot was already occupied. A beheaded Bern, his arms still twitching, sat behind a collection of smashed instrument panels.
“What happened?” Penny asked. She attempted to pull the body out of the seat, but it must’ve weighed a ton.
“No flankin clue!” Jym yelled. “And that thing ain’t flesh.” He let go of the controls and waved a hand at the Bern. “Took its head off from behind, and the flanker went ballistic, smashing the dash and the canopy. I think the grav systems are toast. I’m not gonna be able to keep us airborne!”
Penny peered through the hole in the canopy, past the snow billowing in to dust the controls and ice everything over. Beyond the craggy hole lay the endless white of hyperspace and the flurries she hated so much. Looking down at the beheaded Bern, she didn’t see any organs inside the neck, just the sheen of metal. It made her feel nauseous, looking at it. She pulled out her sword and gritted her teeth. Carefully, using slow motions, she carved the mechanical Bern and his chair in half, right down the middle. Another clean sweep sideways—careful as the ship lurched again—and she had pieces small enough to carry out of the cockpit. Again, no blood and hardly any oil or grease.
After the body parts were removed, Penny crouched behind the nav controls and tried to help Jym pull the ship’s nose up. The SADAR screen ahead of her was demolished, giving her little to go by, so she looked to Jym’s instruments as a guide. A voice crackled through the radio, barely audible over the whipping wind. It said something in Bern right as Mortimor staggered into the cockpit, breathing hard.
“Did you catch that?” Penny yelled back to Mortimor.
He reached for the mic. “Yeah,” he said. He surveyed the damage to the dash and sucked in a deep breath. “Both of you keep quiet.”
“What’re you gonna say?” Jym asked.
Mortimor shot him a look. His chest heaved with another deep gulp of air, his beard catching the snow. “I’m going to tell the rest of the Bern fleet that we’ve suffered a mechanical failure so they won’t think anything’s amiss.” He looked to Jym’s instruments as he brought the mic up to his mouth. “And then I’m gonna inform them that we’re going down,” Mortimor said grimly.
?? 2 ??
Cole and Marx coordinated arrivals as the Underground kept their jump platforms busy evacuating the base of its personnel and essentials. Anyone assigned to Support Crew, they directed aft. As members of the Evac Crew appeared in the cargo bay, they assigned them duties and loaded them up with the gear also coming through every five seconds or so. Cole marveled at the military precision of it all. An absolute flood of people and supplies were washing aboard the ship.
Up in the cockpit, the flight crew did an incredible job of holding the Bern craft steady while updating HQ with coordinates. Each arrival appeared in the exact same spot of empty air. The more that came aboard, the more Cole felt a step closer to getting out of that infernal place and tracking down Molly. He was so close he could practically remember what her hair smelled like, when just a few days ago he’d had difficulty picturing her face—
“We’ve got trouble!”
The shout from the cockpit shattered Cole’s thoughts. He and Marx glanced at each other. Marx pulled a large sack of supplies out of the arrival point and handed it off to the alien who had jumped in just prior.
“I’ll go,” Cole said.
Marx nodded as another member of the Underground fell out of the air and landed in a neat crouch. “I’m gonna insist Arthur come with the next group,” Marx said, reaching for his radio. “Protocol and seniority be damned, we need him here.”
“Agreed.” Cole slapped Marx on the shoulder and ran to the cockpit.
“What’s going on?” he asked the flight crew.
Larken spun around. The mic was trembling in his hand. “First group’s going down,” he sputtered. “Someone from the ship broadcasted a mechanical failure in Bern. I’m pretty sure it was Mortimor.”
The pilot took one hand off the steering column and grabbed Larken’s wrist; he pulled the mic away from the translator’s mouth. “You’re not gonna transmit anything to them, are you?”
“No, man! I’m just waiting for the Bern to get suspicious!”
“Calm down, both of you,” Cole said. He stepped up behind the translator and checked the strange-looking SADAR, which was a beehive of blips and odd figures. “Where does it show their altitude?” He glanced over the shapes on the screen, not recognizing any of them as numbers.
“Right there.” The pilot tapped the screen. “And that’s group one’s ship.” He indicated one of the blobs. “They’re going down soft by the looks of it. Not far from the Luddite camp.”
“Is that their camp there?” Cole reached over and tapped the screen.
“Only thing low enough,” the pilot growled.
“Well then, they aren’t going down near them,” Cole said. “I think they’re trying to land on them.”
The radio squawked with more rapid Bern. Larken turned to the pilot, his knuckles white around the mic.
“I think he’s right, sir.”
?? 5 ??
The trio of white-clad warriors shuffled down the corridor toward Edison and Anlyn, their courage seeming to have rallied as they raised the strange cylinders in their hands.
“Desist!” Edison roared once more. He berated himself for leaving his lance in the cockpit as Anlyn scooted safely around him. “Stay where you are!” he tried in Bern.
One of the Bern stiffened and pulled back on the alien ahead of him. “We’re taking over control of your ship,” he returned in Bern. “On your knees!”
Edison took a step back and growled at Anlyn to return to the cockpit. As she ran off, the three attackers surged forward, the one in the front bringing his empty hands up high as if wielding an invisible club.
Edison threw his feet forward and fell flat on his back, sending a shiver through the deck. He brought his knees up to his chest as some unseen thing whizzed through the air above him. Kicking out with his legs, he caught the figure in the chest and sent him sprawling back into the other two.
Something clattered to the ground nearby. Reaching forward to grab it—a metal cylinder of some sort—Edison paused. The bulkhead to the side of the device was sparking. A thin line of destruction streaked across the solid steel as the cylinder rolled across the deck toward him. Edison’s scientific thought processes kicked into high gear. He picked the thing up, keeping the laser end pointed away. He leveled the device at the three men.
Nothing happened.
Insufficient range, he figured.
He took a step forward, and the other two figures in white dropped their cylinders and raised their hands.
“We give up!” one of them said in English.
“Excellent maneuver.” Edison aimed the strange cylinder at the one who had spoken in Bern and switched to that language himself:
“Now, who in hyperspace are you people?”
?? 2 ??
Cole watched the blip on the SADAR, the one showing Mortimor’s ship descending toward the frozen wastelands of hyperspace. The pilot and translator were yelling back and forth, arguing about what to do for them, but it was mere background noise. All Cole could think about was what might have gone wrong with Mortimor’s group and how he should’ve been there with them.
He snapped himself out of the unproductive thoughts and looked around at the bickering crew. The raid was going to fall apart over this, he realized. Mortimor’s mythical status as leader of the Underground was now going to be a distraction rather than a motivating force.
Cole ran out of the cockpit and returned to the cargo bay. He tore open one metal cabinet and locker after another, looking through the ship’s supplies for anything resembling a gravchute, or even an old-fashioned glider. Every five seconds or so, he heard a soft pop as more people and gear arrived from HQ. The finality and awfulness of the raid, of using up what remained of the fusion fuel, of abandoning the Underground’s headquarters, it all dawned on him as a colossal mistake.
Someone grabbed him by the shoulder. Cole turned to find Arthur Dakura frowning at him.
“What’s the emergency?” Arthur asked. He looked annoyed to have been brought aboard out of order.
“One group is going down,” Cole said. He slammed a locker shut and flung open another. “And I’m going down after them.”
Arthur grabbed Cole’s shoulders. He pulled him away from the cabinet just as Cole started rummaging around inside it. “That’s a negative,” Arthur said. “Drawing any more attention will just threaten the other squads. Now, which group did you say is going down?”
Cole clenched and unclenched his teeth. “I told you,” he said. “Group one.”
Arthur’s eyes darted back and forth, searching Cole’s.
“Mortimor’s group,” Cole whispered.
?? 5 ??
Anlyn reached the cockpit and made sure the Bern ship was still holding position and that the fleet hadn’t adjusted itself around them. She grabbed Edison’s lance and ran back aft as the sounds of a struggle and a bout of yelling sent shivers of fear up her spine. She half expected to find dozens of Bern in the cargo bay by the time she returned, the illusion of another ship locked to theirs still lingering.
She entered the bay with the lance level, fully prepared to send its pyrotechnic fireworks into her enemy. What she found instead was Edison standing bold before the three figures, something in his hand aimed at them. Two of the figures held their arms in the air. The other clutched his stomach, in obvious pain, but still attempting to speak. His efforts were interrupted by the arrival of two more white-suited aliens running up from the rear, neither of them Bern. Anlyn recognized one of them as a Pheral, the other a Callite. Her head swelled with confusion; the Bern were not known to ally themselves with other races.
The original three held the new arrivals back, telling them in English to be careful. Edison roared at the two in the back to drop their weapons, which they refused to do.
Anlyn stepped beside Edison with the lance level, hoping it looked suitably fierce. “Which of you speaks English?” she asked.
“We all do,” the Pheral said. He pulled the white hood off his head, revealing his yellowish, mottled skin. “What’s a Drenard doing working for the Bern?”
“We’re not with the Bern,” Anlyn said, beginning to sense that this group wasn’t either. “This is Lord Campton, and I am Anlyn Hooo. We are members of the Drenard Circle and come as ambassad—”
Anlyn fell silent as the group of aliens sank to their knees, their eyes wide and mouths open. Weapons that had been held at the ready immediately moved into tucked positions of submission.
“Hooo of the royal line,” one of the figures whispered.
The one clutching his stomach seemed to forget his pain, his grimace morphing into a wide smile as he looked up at her and Edison. “We are members of the Drenard Underground,” the man said. “We are protectors of the rift, and we are honored to serve.”
Softly, one of the five began saying something, chanting. Others joined in.
Anlyn stood, welded to the decking in abject shock, just barely able to make out the words. They were the words of the Bern Seer. The collection of aliens were chanting the prophecy.
Edison and Anlyn turned toward each other, neither of them able to speak.
Edison lowered his weapon.
And rolled his eyes.