The Zygan Emprise: Renegade Paladins and Abyssal Redemption (21 page)

Our own hunt for the terrorists now pointed
us in the direction of the planet Orion Alpha
.
Ulenem’s warning, as well as the discovery of those
recently created radiation belts around so many worlds in the Orion
system, led us all to suspect that Benedict (or another villain
with the same name, Sarion joked) was using the star system as his
new testing ground. We needed to go there and investigate.

Spud and I agreed to lead our team to Orion
in my Zoom Starcruiser. Matshi would follow in his warship with
Sarion, and Eikhus and Nephil Stratum would join us in the
Nautilus
^xxiii
after picking up
Setsei and Suthsi from the Ytran Enclave.

Contact metrics were finalized and we fled
Zyga, once again, by stealth. I set nav to warp towards Orion
Alpha.

“So who’s this Milton guy you were talking
about before,” I asked Spud.

“John Milton,” Spud responded. “Merely the
best English writer of all time.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Not Shakespeare?”

Spud snorted. “In my opinion, Shakespeare was
a very inferior fellow. His entire
oeuvre
was soap opera and
situation comedy,” he added for my benefit. “And,” he chuckled and
gave me a wink, “it may actually have been written by another man
with that name, Francis Bacon.”

“Hey, I’ve played that,” I returned with a
grin. “Six Degrees of Francis Bacon.” I did a pretend drum roll
with my hands. “Ba-rum-pum.”

Spud looked at me through narrowed eyes,
“That, Rush, was worthy of Sarion.”

“I am properly insulted,” I huffed.

“Anyway,” Spud continued with a twinkle in
his eye, “John Milton wrote
Paradise Lost
, an epic poem in
which Satan, a fallen angel, is cast down into Hell and decides to
fight God and re-enter Heaven. He finally succeeds and ends up
tempting Adam and Eve to eat the apple of the Tree of Knowledge, so
now they too are cast out.”

“You think Benedict and/or Gary are
fighting—”

The pain was overwhelming. I almost lost
consciousness as my head cracked against the viewscreen and my sore
elbow was momentarily wrenched from its socket. In the darkness, I
couldn’t even see Spud, nor hear his breathing. Nav was obviously
dead. Our ship pitched and rolled endlessly, magnified by the
forced transition out of hyperdrive. My back slammed against
weapons control, which, already damaged, crumpled with the force of
the blow.

I was unable to visualize anything inside or
outside our ship as we somersaulted in black space. Gritting my
teeth against the pain, I pulled myself back into my seat and
grabbed my Ergal, hoping I could jumpstart nav and improvise
weapons.

Spud must’ve had the same idea, as auxiliary
nav came on along with the ship lights. I gasped involuntarily.
Spud had a huge gash on his scalp and was drenched in blood—some of
it apparently mine.

“Weapons regen!” I shouted. “Fusion
torpedos.”

“Laser charges,” echoed Spud hoarsely. “Full
power.”

I scanned nav holo and ran my fingers on it
to enter an evasive pattern. “Identify attack.”

Crash
! Another blow hit us from the
side and we flipped over and over—this time, fortunately, tractored
into our seats. Smoke filtered in from our vents, fogging up the
interior and triggering the atmospheric shields that all Zygan
ships automatically activate if airlocks are breached accidentally
or deliberately. “Ventilation resuming,” Spud grunted, as we felt
the flow of fresh air.

“What is it? Who?” I cried, between deep
breaths of replenishing oxygen.

“Zygan, certainly,” Spud said, alarmed. “And
they obviously know all our evasive maneuvers.”

I hit nav again. “Manual.” My skills as a
pilot trainee at Mingferplatoi had been good. Would they be good
enough?

Crash
! We pitched again, but this time
it was a glancing blow and the damage was less. I dove a light-year
and spiraled up to catch our assaulter by surprise from behind. No
such luck. The Zygan ship had duplicated my moves and was still
following us when I leveled off. Panning, spooling, flipping, all
were useless. The Zygan pilot’s skills were terrific, and his ship
seemed to be even stronger and faster than ours. Spud continued
launching a few of our charges and torpedoes, which, dodged by the
Zygan vessel, flew harmlessly off into the ether.

Crash
! The lights and nav went out
again, and we floated, dead in space. Neither of our Ergals could
regenerate systems this time. We were in deep space, in deep
trouble.

“Escape pods?” I suggested to Spud.

He nodded, and we Ergaled into our suits and
ejected invisibly into the vacuum. Or, so we thought. The tractors
hit us the moment we left our ship, which was then blasted into
smithereens by a well-aimed fusion torpedo from our attackers’
vessel. As we were being hauled through space towards our captors,
Spud was actively mouthing some words to me I couldn’t make out
from inside his helmet.

I shook my head and shrugged. Nothing to do
now but wait. We’d be in the Zygan ship soon enough. And somehow I
didn’t think we’d be meeting friends.

* * *

As soon as we’d entered the airlock, the
tractors were released. We tried to Ergal out of the enemy ship,
only to find that our Ergals had somehow disappeared, and we were
effectively unarmed.
Someone
apparently had a functioning
Ergal, because we were M-fanned into a holding cell right after
clearing the airlock.

The holding cell was a small chamber, no
larger than my walk-in closet at the Malibu pad. We sat at the far
end of the room, watching its locked portal and waiting for our
captors to appear and reveal themselves. Spud lifted off his helmet
and turned to me.

“What were you trying to say to me out
there?” I asked, as soon as I had removed mine.

Spud shook his head and said, “I suspect it
is Gary.”

The chamber door whooshed open and a familiar
voice greeted us. “That’s right, Escott. Gary.”

Neither of us was happy to see him holding a
stun gun. Spud remained stone-faced. I tried a smile. “Boy, are we
glad to see you.”

Gary didn’t smile back. “What were you two
doing in this quadrant?” he asked coldly.

“Dogfighting with you,” I answered, somewhat
truthfully, then instantly regretted being flip as Gary aimed his
gun at my chest. I curled into a defensive crouch and added. “Okay.
Sorry.”

Gary turned to Spud. “You don’t think I
monitor my office?”

Spud looked pained. “I should have. But I
counted on Core Security as being adequate …”

Gary Ergaled himself a chair and sat down
facing us, stun gun remaining at the ready. “Once again, why are
you here?” he demanded.

He turned his gun towards me for a moment,
but I had already decided that answering “because we can’t escape”
would be unwise. Neither Spud nor I said anything.

Finally, he continued. “Your bearing seems to
indicate you were headed for Orion. Why?”

I theatrically nudged Spud. “See, I told you
we were off-course. We were on our way to, uh, see a live comedy
show on Scylla.”

Gary and Spud both looked at me, incredulous.
I rolled my eyes and then finally said seriously, “Oh, cut it out,
Gary. You know why.”

Gary smiled at last. “Yes. Yes, I do. Very
clever of you to figure some things out.” He raised his eyebrows.
“Not very clever of you to leave a temporal trail I could
track.”

Spud shook his head. “Ev …”

“No. When I first sent you to Phoenicia, I
put trackers on your Ergals that left temporal footprints. Just
wanted to be sure nothing went wrong.” He couldn’t resist a smirk.
“No reason to take them off when you got back.”

“So you knew Sutherland was in Phoenicia all
the time!” I said angrily.

Gary snorted. “Knew? I sent him there. Poor
Wart …” His sigh turned into a laugh.

“And why are we still alive?” Spud
interrupted.

My heart skipped.

“Frankly, I was a little slow on the draw.”
Gary smiled again “I underestimated you. You’ve now had a couple of
hours lead on me. And before I eliminate you as threats, I need to
know who else you’ve talked to.”

My heart stopped. Spud simply nodded,
satisfied. “I thought so.”

Gary looked at each of us in turn. “So, let’s
not get melodramatic here. Just give me the names and I’ll
catharize
^xxiv
you.”

“And if we don’t?” I said, clenching my
teeth.

“I’ll put you through hell,” Gary said
coldly, “and then I’ll kill you.”

Our only hope was that our cavalry would
arrive in time. Matshi and Eikhus working together might be able to
vanquish Gary. Unfortunately, our designated rendezvous time was
still a few hours in the future. Until then, they wouldn’t even
know we were in trouble. Could Spud and I hold out that long?

* * *

Zyga—present day

Matshi glided his ship along the stunning
rocky coastline of Zyga’s Megaran Enclave above the sparkling
aquamarine sea below. Bacchanalian resorts were few and far between
in Zygfed, so the Enclave was a favorite vacation destination among
Zygans, who enjoyed its lovely beaches during the day, and its
exciting entertainment at night. At the top of the Megaran Bluffs
was one of the Universe’s largest collections of holo caverns with
magicians, dancers, comedians, singers, Deltans (pleasure
facilitators), and other entertainers from the far reaches of
Andromeda. The Enclave, like Megara itself, was famous for being on
36/12
^xxv
.

Sarion was waiting for Matshi in a Transport
portal off Promenade 48. The Megaran had enlisted three mates to
accompany him on the mission, Pallas, Nissos, and Lykkos. Matshi
had sparred with Pallas at a Megaran wrestling arena a couple of
years before and was thrilled to have Pallas and his friends on his
team.

After the pick-up, the always-wary Matshi
took a parabolic route from Zyga to our agreed-upon meeting point
in the Bellatrix solar system. He didn’t expect Eikhus to arrive
for another hour, what with the fussiness of the Ytran meiotes,
Setsei and Suthsi, and Eikhus’s tendency to pilot the Nautilus like
an elderly excursioner. But, Matshi was surprised to see that we
weren’t there. We were respected pilots, and I usually lived up to
my last name, Rush.

The Chidurian scratched his head, and, after
a few minutes, began a parsec locator scan to look for us.

“Afraid to ask for directions, huh?” Sarion
joked as he walked over to Matshi.

Matshi did not seem amused. Even Sarion
finally realized his friend was very worried. “What’s the
matter?”

“Fusion torpedo residue,” Matshi shook his
head. “And I’ve picked up some Terran DNA …”

Sarion’s expression registered concern.

“But,” Matshi continued, “it’s a very small
amount. Mixed in with shards of ship composites and metals. But not
enough for a complete human. Or two.”

“Then where could they be?”

“I don’t know, but I may be able to trace the
fusion residue and backtrack to find its source.” Matshi’s nimble
fingers played over the holo as he searched for a ship that could
have fired the torpedo.

After a few minutes, he frowned. “It doesn’t
make sense.”

“What?” Sarion strained to see.

“I traced the torpedo track back to these
coordinates.” Matshi pointed to one end of a jagged line on the
holo. “I’m getting an ion footprint there, but I can’t see a
vessel.” The Chidurian’s frustration was clear.

“Invisible? Stealthed?”

“Possibly.” Matshi chewed his lips. “But
that’s illogical.”

“What do you mean?”

“The footprint of the residue is Zygan. Why,
in a Zygan quadrant, would a Zygan ship be stealthed? Unless
they’re up to something. Even
we’re
not stealthed, and we’re
not exactly on an official mission.”

“Kidnapping? Hit and run?”

Matshi nodded his head. “That’s what I’m
thinking.”

“Do we go after them?” Sarion didn’t seem to
be asking a question.

Matshi nodded and gave the command to
nav.

* * *

“But we’ll die!”

Frustrated, Nephil Stratum looked at
Eikhus.

“Suthsi, that really isn’t likely.” The
Kharybdian tried to be convincing. “And we could save the lives of
millions.”

Setsei ambled onto the bridge holding a
Geryon in each of his two right hands. He handed one of the long,
golden, spear-like Ytran weapons to his meiote, who hesitated, and
then accepted the Geryon with one of his two left hands. Setsei’s
voice trembled as he gently rubbed Suthsi’s smooth right trunk with
his own left. “We went to Mingferplatoi for a reason. Let us
fulfill our purpose now.”

Yellow tears fell from Suthsi’s eyes as the
Ytran took his gleaming Geryon and micro’ed it into his robes.
Setsei stroked Suthsi’s flagella with his own as a gesture of
thanks.

“What’s wrong?” Eikhus interjected, noting
that Nephil Stratum had turned a dark gray.

“I just got commed by Matshi,” she replied
anxiously. “Shiloh and William are not at the contact site. They
seem to be missing, and Matshi thinks they may have been kidnapped
by a rogue Zygan ship!”

The Ytrans said the word together:
“Andarts!”

Chapter 15

Adam

Kidnapped—present day

Rush screamed in agony. Only my ka’vyr
techniques kept me from losing complete control and collapsing into
unconsciousness, where my neurocache would be ripe for Gary’s
picking.

I heard myself scream again. The
chorizing
procedure allowed me to mentally step outside my
body and kept me from experiencing the full extent of the pain.
Like a hyperpowered narcotic,
chorizing
also removed the
anxiety that made pain so unbearable. Still my mastery of the
ka’vyr practices was primitive. If he knew I was resisting, Gary
might ‘turn up the volume’ of the torture more than I would be able
to cope.