Stars of Charon (Legacy of the Thar'esh Book 1) (28 page)

Though I
wanted to be more like Ju-lin, I realized I had too many other lives in my
head. It was like I had to constantly contend with the memories of two other
minds within my own. The community of the living, no matter who they were, was
far too important. And I could not just walk away. I recalled Loid’s parting
words about going to get Ju-lin’s family off planet and running. I knew I
couldn’t do it. There were too many lives at stake, and too many unanswered
questions.

“My
shift,” Ju-lin’s voice made me jump.

“You’re
up early,” I fumbled an answer.

“Ah,
reading up on the local news,” she asked as she looked over my shoulder.
“Anything interesting?”

“Everything
actually,” I answered honestly.

“Oh yeah,
you’re new to the NewsNets,” she answered as she sipped on a cup of tea. “Don’t
worry, it will get old after a while. It’s always the same old stories, a war
breaking out here, Draugari raiding there, a dispute with the Celestrials, and
some new fancy piece of unnecessary tech that the Domari Traders are trying to
sell. Did I get it all?”

“Pretty
much,” I smiled as I pulled myself out of the pilot’s seat. “I guess it’s my
turn to get some sleep.”

“I’ll
wake you up when we’re getting close,” Ju-lin smiled as she slipped happily
into the chair and flipped the controls to activate some additional scanners.
“Sleep well.”

Chapter 28.

“No,” I said. “We wait.”

“Yes, of course,” Jen’tak nodded heartily. “Make sure that
they cannot run back and hide in the flux point, close in around them and feast
on the glory of battle.”

“No,” I repeated, “We wait. Maintain minimal energy
signatures. See where they are going, if they continue to the target system, we
follow them.”

“And if not?” Tren raised his arms as his voice thundered.
“What? We let them go? Blast that, we go now, the Skins are there for the
taking.”

“We wait,” I stood up out of my chair and stepped toward
Tren. “I am in command of this Cadre, my orders will be followed.”

Tren stepped up to me, pulling off his helmet. I did the
same. The human air was stifling. But I ignored it.

“Your orders?” Tren echoed as he raised his lips, bearing his
teeth.

“Yes,” I snapped back, parting my lips. “I follow the
commands handed to me by the Chieftain, sent directly from the Conclave. Do you
question their authority?”

“Their authority was never in question,” Jen’tak stood and
drew off his helmet.

“We are a long way from our migration Lor’ten,” Tren
responded. “We will not be denied our hunt because you do not have the stomach
for it.”

Tren’s hand slid to the hilt of his knife.

“You know what I have the stomach for,” I answered as I drew
my knife.

“Course change,” Kal called, breaking the tension of the
moment. “The Skins are breaking off, heading toward the flux point. They are
heading toward the target system.”

“We follow them at a distance. Keep power signatures low,” I
ordered.

“And then?” Tren asked.

“If they go near the planet, we destroy them.”

Tren made a clicking sound with his lips and pulled his
helmet back on.

I heard a
woman scream, and I raced forward. I was in a dark corridor lit by faint
flashes of light. The walls were rusted steel. The scream came again, echoing
down the hall. The scream was no longer the thin voice of a woman, it was the
low howl of a dying beast. I kept running toward the sound, and the walls
changed. Instead of steel and rust, there was stone and wood, I was in a cave.
The flickering chemical lights were replaced with thin flickering flames from
hanging candles. Somewhere, someone started to scream my name, but the sound
was cut short as they began to choke. I heard thin gurgling. They were
drowning. I felt my own throat fill up and I tasted blood, I coughed and spat
to try to clear my throat, but I still couldn’t breathe. Horror gripped me as I
panicked as I looked for help. Faces emerged in the dark. Some were Draugari,
some were Thar’esh, others were human, and all were pale, cold, and dead. The
scream came again—

“Eli!”

I
continued to shake as the darkness raced around me.

“Dammit
Eli! Wake up!”

The voice
wasn’t faint or distant. It wasn’t monstrous or dying.

I opened
my eyes, I was on my bunk, covered in sweat. Ju-lin was leaning over me,
concern on her face.

“It’s
alright,” she said softly. “You were having a nightmare, I heard you screaming
from the cockpit.”

“Screaming?”
I asked as I propped myself up. “What was I saying?”

“Hell if
I know,” Ju-lin answered. “You weren’t speaking any language I’d ever heard.
What did you see?”

“Shadows,”
I replied as I tried to shake the images from my memories. “The dead, the
dying, I don’t want to talk about it. Where are we?”

“On
route,” she sat down on my bunk, and put her hand briefly on my shoulder. “It’s
quiet, well, it was quiet, except for you.”

“Yeah,” I
replied. “Sorry.”

“You have
a lot going in your head apparently,” she said with a grin.

I
chuckled.

“Here,
I’ll get up and let you take a rest,” I said. “I won’t get any sleep anyway.”

I
shifted, waiting for her to get up so I could slide out of the bunk.

She
didn’t.

“Slide
over,” she said as she kicked off her shoes.

I shifted
with my back against the bulkhead as she leaned toward me and kissed me lightly
on the cheek and looked at me with her lips still parted. I could feel my heart
thumping in my chest as I looked back at her. Then she flashed her wicked grin,
and rolled over, and nestled her back against me, I put my arm around her and
held her. Her warmth and smell chased away the shadows from my nightmare, and
eventually, I slept.

When I
woke up, she was gone, but the feeling of comfort remained.

“After
this jump we only have two more and we will be there,” Ju-lin said hopefully as
I stepped into the cockpit, still shaking off my sleep.

“Still no
sign of trouble?” I asked.

For hours
now, Ju-lin had been quietly scanning the local Protectorate Fleet channels
listening for any hint that the Collegiate were on the move. So far, we hadn’t
heard anything.

“The next
two systems are undeveloped no-man’s land, it should be nice and quiet,” she
added as she initiated the flux sequence. “If the Collegiate was going to
attack, they would have to cut through the Furies I’ve been listening to
traders and Protectorate alerts, but there’s been nothing about a flight of
Celestrial ships. It looks like we were just worried for nothing. A few more
hours and we’ll be back home, we can get Dad and Marin, and tell the colonists
to evacuate.”

The
ship’s power surged as it slipped into the flux point, sliding into the narrow
void that stitched the solar systems together. In order to fight off my
churning stomach, I thought back to the Domari myth that Loid had told us about
the god jumping from system to system, poking holes in the universe. Ridiculous
as it was on the face, I wondered if there was some truth buried in it. If
somewhere out there, there was another alien race who had created the network
of flux points that allowed us to travel from system to system. After all, the
Domari Collective had been the first humanoids to make it into space, perhaps
there was a seed of truth in the stories. Like the Celestrials telling stories
about the void souls. I knew well enough that the Thar’esh were not some
mystical, ethereal beasts. But, over time, they had become symbols of things
that the Celestrials didn’t understand. Like the humans and their gods.

 As we
sat I quietly pondered if the flux points were created by some long-forgotten
race. What if that technology once existed to burrow these holes through the
vastness of space? What if that technology could be found again?

My head
stopped spinning as we slid back into normal space. I realized that I had been
holding my breath. The scopes were clear. I settled into the jump seat as we
continued to slip through the black.

Chapte
r 29.

“They fluxed,” Jen’tek said as he licked his lips hungrily.
“Follow!”

“Follow them, but keep our distance,” I said. “We don’t act
until they reach the planet.”

Jen’tek clicked his tongue in disapproval, Kal shifted in his
seat.

“We will attack them in the atmosphere,” I continued. “We can
use the world to mask our approach. The lizards will not know what hit them.”

Tren and Kel voiced their approval, even Jen’tek seemed
placated. He would soon have blood.

But, I thought to myself, I have another motive. The Chieftain
did not know why we were sent out here. We did not know what we were sent to
protect. The Conclave was keeping it from us. If they would not tell us, we
will have to fly in and find out for ourselves.

“Tren, tell the pilots to detach the Slires and prepare to
flux,” I ordered.

“All’s
quiet, I guess all the worry was for nothing,” Ju-lin smiled as we moved toward
the final flux point. “Maybe we’ve been overreacting about all of this anyway.
We’ll explain it all to dad. He’ll either figure out how to evacuate or see if
we can get MineWorks to provide a defense force. Either way, he’ll know what to
do.”

She didn’t turn back to look at me, so I didn’t have to force
a reassuring look. Maybe Loid was wrong about the Collegiate. Maybe Alume
didn’t have the power he implied. Maybe we were would slip back into the system
and land on the colony without incident. But try as I might, I couldn’t quite
convince myself. I took a deep breath and prepared for the worst.

Tons-o-Fun
’s core rumbled to life as Ju-lin activated the jump drive.
She
let go of the controls
and leaned back into her seat as the ship’s computer followed the
pre-programmed path through the void. We were silent as the seconds passed. For
once the swirling disorientation of the void didn’t bother me. I was too
intently focused on what we would find on the other end of the flux.

We
returned to normal space with a jarring suddenness. The black of open space
surrounded. For a half of a second, everything was quiet and calm. I was just
starting to let out my breath when my console began to flash. A half-second
later two different alarms sounded.

“What the
hell is that?” Ju-lin said as she took the controls.

Before I
could respond the
Tons
shook violently.

“It’s a
proximity alarm,” as I said it the alarms silenced. “Wait, no, not anymore.”

“What do
you mean
not anymore
?” Ju-lin asked as she engaged the engines as she
searched her display.

“I mean
it gave a proximity alarm, but now it’s gone,” I said. “It looks like something
hit us, the hull wasn’t breached. Systems are showing green. Maybe whoever it
was shot us and fluxed out behind us?”

“Only one
way to find out,” Ju-lin said as she jammed the controls violently, engaging
the thrusters to turn us around 180 degrees.

Looking
back in our wake we could see a cluster of debris. Two larger pieces drifted
nearby. One looked like an engine, the other large segment was a smooth,
angular line of a hull.

“Oh
hell,” Ju-lin sighed.

“Whatever
it was,” I said slowly. “It didn’t make it to the flux point.”

“We must
have jumped in right on top of him,” she said. “Poor bastard never had a
chance.”

“Not much
left of it,” I said. “The scanners can’t identify it, but it was small.”

“I can,”
Ju-lin said. “See what’s left of the fuselage there, there is only one race in
the verse that builds a ship with lines like that.”

“Celestrial,”
I sighed. “Do you think he just got here? That’s a little ship to be all alone
out here—oh.”

“What?”
She craned her neck back to look at me.

A loss
for words, I continued looking out the viewport to the lights in the distance.

She
turned back forward, following my gaze and froze.

“Look at
them all,” her voice was barely more than a whisper.

Eridani
III was an easily recognizable speck in the distance, but between us and the
colony was what looked like a massive grey and silver thunderhead complete with
splintered flashes of lightning and flashing explosions.

“S-scanning,”
I managed to pry my eyes away and look down at my console. “Ships, a lot of
ships. The computer is reading between 150 and 300. The numbers keep adjusting
as more ships appear.  All sizes, looks like Celestrial. Wait, no, Celestrial
and
Draugari.”

“Draugari?”
Ju-lin repeated as she engaged the thrusters to full, sending is barreling
toward the raging battle. “Any Earthborn ships? What the hell is going on?”

“The
computer is reading all signals as alien. Some Earthborn ships, but no
Protectorate transponders, probably pirated Draugari vessels. I don’t know, but
it looks like the Draugari are deployed between the Collegiate and the colony.”

“Are you
sure?” She asked as she pulled up the long-range scans. “They are. Maybe the
Draugari haven’t had a chance to raid it yet.”

“They are
defending it,” I said.

“The
Draugari are defending the colony?” She asked hotly. “You sound certain.”

“I am,” I
said simply.

Once
again Ju-lin spared a glance over her shoulder. She held my eyes for a moment
before turning back to the controls. She turned back and spent a long moment
studying the fleets. At last she took a long and measured breath.

“See if
you can plot a path that will take us around the bulk of the fighting. There,”
she said. “See the debris and burnt out ships? It looks like the battle is
moving over there to the left. That’s the thing about space battles, they have
to shift away from the debris. If we head into where all the wreckage is
floating we should have some cover. We need to make it down to the colony. They
will be focused on each other so we should have a chance to slip through on the
fringe. And keep your eyes out for a rear-guard. Fleets tend to leave a scout
behind to make sure they don’t get outflanked.”

“Well
we’re lucky there, I think we already ran over him,” I said.

“Good
point,” Ju-lin replied. “At least he didn’t have time to get a signal out.
Hopefully that’s not all of our luck today. We’ll need all we can get.”

“Alright,
now steady on, there is a large wreck of something at about your three o’clock
low. Can you make it down there?”

“There’s
some debris but I should be able to,” Ju-lin answered as she fired the
thrusters, sending us spiraling downward to narrowly avoid the broken wing of a
Draugari Slire. The big wreck, it looks like some sort of old retrofitted
hauler. Protectorate, but very old by the lines. I wonder how long the Draugari
had been limping that thing along.”

“Got a
live one up ahead,” I said as my hand went to the weapons controls. “A damaged
Celestrial.”

“He’s
powering weapons,” Ju-lin answered. “I have to give him credit, he’s not giving
up. Without our transponder going he probably just thinks we’re another
Draugari.”

“Hold
steady, I have him.”

I worked
the controls to line up the targeting reticule over the ship. It was one of the
small Celestrial fighters, there were black scars along the hull and it looked
like one of its twin engines had gone dark. He was working his thrusters to
bring his guns around. The ship’s rocket launcher rotated as it prepared to
fire.

I pulled
the trigger. With the shields already down there was nothing to protect the
little fighter from the blast of the
Tons’
mass driver cannon. The ship
dissolved into dust. As soon as it hit, Ju-lin swung us hard to port and
punched the thrusters and angled us toward the hauler’s wreck.

Ju-lin
had been right about disengaging the transponder. She had explained that in
large fleet actions all ships make sure to have their fleet transponders on so
that they can easily tell friend from foe. The commanders require it so that
they can keep a clean and accurate view of the battle. It’s incredibly useful
to make sure you don’t accidentally wander too far from friendly guns. For us,
it served as a kind of cloaking device. With the Collegiate and Draugari
focused on watching their scopes to track enemy ships, they weren’t looking out
for untagged vessels. As Ju-lin had said, “without the transponder, the
computer can’t tell the difference between us and the other lumps of burning
wreckage.”

Although
Loid would have strongly objected to her referring to
Tons-o-Fun
as
“wreckage,” I was reasonably certain he would have appreciated the tactic. I
felt a pang of guilt. Somewhere he was being held prisoner, tortured, or even
dead. Though, granted, I thought to myself as Ju-lin adjusted our course to
avoid what looked like the body of a dead Draugari floating listlessly in the
debris field, Loid may have it better off than we do right now anyway I
thought.

“Can you
tell how the battle is going?” Ju-lin asked as we came alongside the wreck of
the hauler. There were blast marks and occasional bursts of flame as the last
pockets of air fed the dying fire. I could see makeshift gunnery seats rigged
along the bulkhead. Most of them were shattered with the now-dead Draugari
still at their guns. I pushed the rising wave of memories down and focused on
the task at hand.

The
Draugari had significantly more firepower, but the Celestrials were well
equipped and better coordinated. Though most of the wreckage we had seen were
Draugari, we saw the remains of nearly a dozen or Celestrial fighters. I had
seen four-pointed star of Vasudeva on the wings of two of them. Most of the
Celestrial ships were single-man fighters, though there were a number of larger
bombers and several larger corvette-class vessels that the computer couldn’t
identify still in the fight.

“From the
wreckage I’d say that the Draugari took a beating on the first clash,” I
answered. “They pulled back and are being more defensive now. The Celestrials
don’t have a lot whole lot of firepower, but they have numbers and they seem to
be a lot better organized.”

“Sounds
about right,” Ju-lin responded. “The Draugari normally use hit and run tactics,
I’ve never heard of them standing their ground. They are migrants, they never
have any territory to defend. It’s just weird.”

“It is,”
I said quietly.

“What are
you thinking?” She asked. “You sounded like that before.”

“Nothing.
Well,” I paused. “Nothing I can make sense of. Lor’ten, the Draugari I killed.
I know he was sent here to watch the world. There is something they want to
protect. I just wish he had known what it was.”

“Because
if he would have known you would know?”

“More or
less,” I answered.

Ju-lin
said something under her breath.

I let it
pass, if she was uncomfortable with the idea I couldn’t blame her. Having to
sift through other people’s memories made me plenty uncomfortable.

“I take
that back,” I said as I studied the scanner display, we were close enough now
that the scanners were able to identify more of the vessels. “The larger ships
in the rear of the Collegiate fleet aren’t corvettes. They aren’t even combat
vessels, they are haulers. I have a good look at one right now, it’s reading as
a terraforming vessel, computer shows six of them, each carrying ten atmo field
generators attached externally.”

“Atmo
field generators?” she echoed. “That fleet has sixty atmo generators?”

“Yeah,
computer says that they are used in the terraforming process to develop
hospitable atmospheric conditions for colonization,” I read. “They are capable
of processing native gasses to produce a wide variety of necessary atmospheric
elements, including nitrogen, oxygen, and greenhouse gasses.”

“I have
to give the Skins points for creativity,” Ju-lin sighed. “Celestrials are the
masters of Terraforming. Usually they only need ten of those things to replace
a planet’s atmosphere. But if they just drop them all and fire them up spewing
greenhouse gasses-”

“They
will cloud over the planet and either freeze or burn out the surface.”

“It would
be inhospitable within a week,” Ju-lin added. “If they overload the atmosphere
they would turn the surface into a wasteland, super-storms would cover the
world. Anyone down there would die, and anything down there would be wiped out
or irrecoverable.”

We
continued flying along in silence as we paced along the wrecked hull of the
hauler. By navigating the debris field, we had managed to bypass most of the
fighting. I looked up and watched as the Draugari and Celestrial fleets shifted
in formations. There were sporadic flashes of light as they occasionally
exchanged fire. The initial clash was over, both sides were regrouping and
strategizing their next move.

The
Draugari fleet clustered defensively around four large vessels, most looked
like converted haulers like the wreck we were passing. Each would be crewed by
dozens of Draugari warriors.
Honor, strength, honor, strength.
I
remembered chanting the words in my mind, over and over as I waited on the edge
of battle. No, I hadn’t. Lor’ten had. It wasn’t me. I looked down at my hands
resting comfortably on the
Tons’
weapon controls. No, I realized, it was
me. Lor’ten was a trained gunner, so I was a trained gunner. His thoughts, his
skills, his memories. They were my own. They were my skills, my memories. I
shivered involuntarily as I struggled with the thought.