Voyage of the Sanguine Shadow 1: Shadow Galactic (11 page)

Quickly, Zerki panned the reliquary.  “Supposedly,
the central core is somewhere in here.  But since this entire room isn’t on the
schematics I have, who’s to say where it really is?”

Filan glanced toward the entrance.  “I think it
was that orb we passed on the way in.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, but it’s a binary organic.  I could sense
it.”

Zerki considered and finally nodded.  “Go check it
out.”

Filan saluted and looked to Takeo.  “Care to join
me?”

He brightened and hurried to her side as she
crossed the vast chamber to the far bulkhead.  Carefully, she loosed her
optical ponytail and drew out a lengthy cable.  She crouched, and Takeo
steadied her as she slipped one end into the glowing green haze.  For several
seconds, she probed the surface for an access point, while the others gathered
round.  “Ah,” she exhaled, “there you are.”

Her platinum hair cables instantly turned
brilliant green.  Filan gritted her teeth, pressing her eyes closed as she lost
her balance.  Takeo was quick to brace her.  He reached for the interfacing
strand, but she clumsily pushed away his hand.  “No, it’s OK.  I’m just talking
to a ghost.”

Valerie gripped the sides of her head, and she
sputtered, “Captain.  Something’s coming.”

Zerki tore her attention from Filan.  “Are you
getting a vision?”

She nodded.  “Ellogons, lots of them… and…
something else.”  Valerie exhaled, and she leaned her head back as the world
spun into focus.  With rare intensity in her eyes, she declared, “We need to
get back to the
Shadow
!”

“Understood,” said Zerki, and she looked to Takeo,
glaring at the interface strand.  “Filan, it’s time to go.”

Gavin timidly hoped, “Are your visions ever
wrong?”

Somberly, Valerie answered, “Never.”

Takeo pulled the plug, and the green light faded
completely.  “Oh my God,” Filan whispered, her eyes filling with tears as Takeo
helped her to stand.  “The ellogons reprogrammed her to attack Union
colonies!”  She wiped her eyes.  “She didn’t want to do it, but she was a prisoner
in her own body, for
so
long.  She remembered every life she took!”

They began moving along the passages toward the
closest exit hatch.  “Tell us all about it when we get back to the
Shadow
,”
Zerki urged.

“What happened?”  Filan looked hurt and regarded
Takeo.  She sniffed.  “Why’d you pull me out?”

“Val saw ellogons coming,” Takeo explained.

Filan stumbled and stopped.  “Oh no,” she
whispered.  “She sent out a signal flare when I first got in.  Behemothylax
did.”

“Come on, Filan,” Takeo urged, and she quickly
caught up to him.

Zerki halted and pointed to an overhead hatch. 
“They trapped the core, and now we know why.”  She urged her companions to
climb the ladder.  Valerie went up first and pushed the hatch open, letting in
sheets of rain.  A moment later, she was out in the storm, and Gavin followed,
with Takeo close on his heels.  Before Filan took hold of the rungs, Zerki
grabbed her by the shoulder.  “Did you download any of it?”

“Yeah.  All of it,” Filan answered, and she wiped
at her nose and eyes.

Zerki exhaled, smiled graciously, and nodded. 
Filan returned the gesture, and soon they joined the others outside in the
rain.

Shuttle lights shone through the darkened storm,
and the delvers rushed over when Krane landed.  Takeo, Filan, Gavin and Valerie
settled in as Zerki issued a General Quarters alert to make ready for flight. 
Krane docked with the
Sanguine Shadow
, and he joined his captain as she
hurried for the bridge.

“What’s the rush?” Collins asked as Zerki stepped
off the lift.  Krane took to his station and began preflight diagnostics. 
Collins’s expression began to darken.  “Captain?”

“Ellogons.  Possibly many.”

Collins frowned.  “Unlikely.  There’s no way
Lodoxol could’ve found out so soon.”  He studied her as she called up a ship’s
diagram and watched as each bin turned from red to green.  “Something happened
down there.”

At that moment, the lift doors opened again, and
Valerie, Gavin and Filan stepped off.  “Excuse me,” Collins said, and he
approached the byriani.  “You can’t be here.”

“It’s alright,” Zerki countered.  “We might need
her.”  She glanced over to Krane.  “Move those bins as fast and as safely as
you can.  Remember, we have at least one operator manning each of them.”

“On it,” Krane answered.

“Good.  Would hate to scuttle such a haul.”

“Need her for what?”

Zerki held her lieutenant commander’s gaze.  “The
computer was the bottleneck during the last jump, right?”

Collins nodded.  “Effectively, it was.  Still, it
only took a few minutes for the PLA to fire.  You remember how fast it went. 
Hardly even had time to look away from the windows.”

“A few minutes may be more time than we have.”

Suddenly paler, Collins swallowed visibly and
solemnly nodded.  “Aye, Captain.”  He turned to Filan.  “Right this way.”   He
led her to the communications console, prompting the man sitting at it to rise
and step away.  Collins crouched down, dislodged a plastic covering, and
bundles of fiber optics spilled out onto the deck.

Meanwhile, Krane hooked the first bin and moved it
into position.  One by one, he secured and set each of the massive containers
in place.  Slowly, the starship settled over them.  Lingering, deafening booms
rocked the
Sanguine Shadow
as her docking arms locked each bin into
place.  “We’re packed and ready for launch.”

Zerki exhaled, puffing her cheeks.  “Well, that’s
my pound of luck.  Krane, take us up.  Don’t mind the headwinds.  Set course
for Helios System, planet Huya.”

“On it, Captain.  Setting course for—”

“Captain!” the woman at the scanning station
interjected.  “Starships are coming into range, right over us!  It’s too soon
to identify, but there’s at least twenty of them!”  She put the scanner display
on the main screen, where everyone on the bridge watched a score of gray dots
appear in a tight group high above Behemothylax’s crash site.  “They must have
been on standby in orbit around Scar’s moon, Captain.  It’s the only way they
could’ve gotten here so fast.”

“Damn it,” growled Zerki, and she struck the
railing before her with a balled fist.  Her eyes sharp, she looked to her
Navigator.  “You need to do your thing now, Gavin.”

Nodding quickly, he climbed into the harness as
the
Sanguine Shadow
continued rocketing for the starry void.  Navigation
charts and images of their destination began to appear on the overhead
display.  “When do I start?”

Tags began appearing, attached to each of the
arriving vessels, and the gray markers turned red.  Their labels identified
them as ellogon warships, a mix of frigates, destroyers, cruisers and
battleships.

“Now would be nice.”

“We can’t jump this close to the planet,” said
Krane.  “The air is too dense.”

She looked pleadingly to Gavin.  “That’s not what
I want him to do.”  She cleared her throat.  “That’s not what I want you to do,
Gavin.  Very soon, those warships are going to get lock on our position, and
that’ll be it for us.  Right now, I need you to cast a well, like you did on
Afskya.”

“Right,” he whispered, his heart pounding in his
chest.  He secured the rig’s headpiece, closed his eyes and imagined the funnel
he had seen during the video playback.  “Is anything happening?”

“Not yet.”

The woman at the scanning station announced,
“Three destroyers have weapons lock, Captain. They’re coming about!”  A trio of
markers shifted to bright red, now decorated with crimson exclamation points
that bobbed over each.  Live heading data tumbled through a waterfall of
numbers as the computer tracked the destroyers’ positions.

Come on
, thought Gavin, and tears ran from
his eyes.

“I’m in,” Filan announced, her hair now
brilliantly aglow.  She twisted around to face the view screen.  A lone green
dot rose from the planet’s broad curve, headed directly for a growing cloud of
red dots.  “Are we the green dot?” she squeaked.

Collins nodded grimly and squeezed her forearm.

“Here they come,” Valerie breathed.

“Who, the
ellogons
?”  Zerki cast her first
mate a withering stare.  “My dear, they’re already here!”

Valerie shook her head. “Not the ellogons.”  She
switched the main screen to external view.  “Look.”

Suddenly, a blue beam as wide as the frigate it
struck cut through the inky abyss.  In an instant, the vessel and all hands
aboard her were obliterated.  A bombardment of similar beams swept through the
cluster of warships, reducing a heavy cruiser and a battleship to drifting
debris.

The destroyers that had been targeting the
Sanguine
Shadow
now banked hard to starboard, trying to engage the source of their
flotilla’s unexpected and ongoing destruction.  Zerki studied her starship’s external
camera feed, and she gasped.  “What is
that
?”

Far beyond the line of engagement, a starship the
size of a metropolis materialized, turning slowly about on its axis.  Hundreds
of towers rose up from its titanic square base.  From below, a cruiser-sized
turret trained on its targets, wiping out the ellogon response fleet one warship
at a time.

The ellogons returned fire, but their dozens of
blasts and hundreds of missiles—weapons that would have torn Zerki’s starship
apart with just one direct hit—splashed harmlessly upon the city-ship’s
shields.

“We’re clear of the planet,” Krane announced.

Gavin’s eyes popped open, and he sucked in a deep
breath.  He was in the jump rig aboard the
Sanguine Shadow
, and at the
same time he was in the cold void of space that Huya moved through.  All the
numbers and images melted away, taking the shape of clouds, satellites, of the
planet’s moon and its distant binary sun.  He breathed in every atom, every
molecule in the space around him, and in an instant, he
knew
their
destination.

Filan cried out, doubling over, and Collins held
her tight as she exhaled glowing fluid from her mouth and nose.  Her bundles of
fiber lit up the bridge bright as daylight and were hot enough to burn
Collins’s brow.  She clenched her jaw and eyes, and she fought to retain
consciousness as petabytes of information coursed through her.  Outside, the
laser array swung into position.

A blue beam cut swaths through the group of
destroyers that had been targeting the
Sanguine Shadow
.  Their shields
vanished, like burst soap bubbles.  Hulls and frames crumbled away, blackening,
and exploded munitions were roses in the void.

The city-ship was tracking to strike the hauler
next.

“All hands brace for impact!” shouted Zerki, and
she tightly gripped the arms of her captain’s chair.  There would be no impact,
she knew.  She only hoped it would be painless.

In that instant, the PLA fired, and the
Sanguine
Shadow
vanished.  The city-ship’s lethal beam swept through the empty
abyss.  Quite some distance from where the hauler had been, a fleeting well of
shared space-time appeared for a few seconds before collapsing upon itself.

With the ellogon flotilla destroyed, the city-ship
lingered in the void, turning slowly, silently upon its axis.

“
All
institutions are prone to corruption and to the vices of their members.
”
–Jacob Bronowski

Cajun eased Filan down
onto a bed within the medical bay.  Tendrils of white smoke still rose from her
in places, and she was warm to the touch all over her body.  She moaned and
muttered incoherently, and he dabbed her forehead with a cool rag.  Her coral
lips had taken on a hint of blue.  “Hush now,” he said.  “Just relax.” 
Collins, Takeo and Taryn stood nearby, watching anxiously.

Fogg floated into view, a column of lights and
tiny metal plates.  He played back an audio file of a man’s voice saying, “I’d
like to help.”  Lights flashed brightly, and the AI bobbed insistently over
Filan’s forehead.

“I know you would,” said Cajun, and he carefully
placed a plastic clip over Filan’s index finger.  He cooled the table and prepared
a glucose drip.  Expertly, he slipped a catheter into the top of her hand and
taped it down, securing the rest of the hep-lock.  “I’ve already injected her
with two doses of reactive electrobiotics.”  He looked to Fogg.  “But maybe you
can help me keep an eye on her.”

Collins asked, “She going to make it?”

Cajun set the cool rag upon her forehead. 
“Probably.  You got a minute?”

Collins nodded and followed him out into the hall,
where Cajun blew into his hands and rubbed his nose.  “She’ll live, but the
truth is I won’t know anything more than that for a few hours.  She’s suffered
internal burns throughout thirty percent of her body.  That being said, her
organics will probably recover, but her circuitry may be fried.”

“What does that mean?”  Collins crossed his arms. 
“Not exactly an expert on the byriani way.”

“It means if her circuits can’t self-repair or be
repaired, she’ll be catatonic for the rest of her life.”

Collins stared off a moment and at last raised his
brow, returning his gaze to Cajun.  “Guess you better get back in there. 
Should be many years of service under the lovely and mighty Captain Ibarra left
in that young lady.  Would be a tearful shame if she had to retire so soon.”

“Genuinely tearful,” Cajun said with a slight
smile, and they returned to the medical bay.

Zerki approached from the hall, with Gavin and
Valerie close behind.  Taryn embraced Gavin tightly, remaining in his arms for
a moment before parting.  She cast him a sad smirk, and he squeezed her hand. 
Zerki said, “Collins, I need you on the bridge.”

“Aye, Captain.”  He excused himself and
disappeared through the bulkhead.

“How is she?”

Cajun puffed his cheeks.  “She’s critical,
Captain, but she’s stable.”

Her expression remorseful, Zerki knelt at Filan’s
side and gently took the byriani’s hand into both of her own.  “You saved our
lives, you and Gavin.”  She exhaled heavily.  “I shouldn’t have been so
greedy,” she whispered.  “Pull through, OK?”

In time, Zerki stood and regarded her companions. 
“Fogg, I’d like you to assist Cajun until Filan recovers.  The rest of you,
take as much time as you need.”  She looked to Cajun and smiled sadly.  “She’s
in good hands.  When you’re ready, D’Arro and I will be waiting in the briefing
room. I’ve got a lead on a buyer for the salvage, and I want you guys down
there with me.” 

“Sure thing,” said Takeo.  He casually saluted.

“We’ll be there in a few minutes,” promised Taryn.

With a slight nod, Zerki straightened her vest and
approached the hall.

Valerie said, “I’ll go with you, Captain,” and she
followed Zerki from the medical bay.

Takeo, Taryn and Gavin remained at Filan’s side
awhile.  With a heavy sigh, Takeo leaned over and tenderly kissed Filan’s
forehead.  “Get better,” he whispered and straightened.  He wiped at his eyes
and exited the medical bay.

“Thanks, Cajun.  Thanks, Fogg,” said Taryn, and
she stepped out into the hall.

Gavin squeezed Filan’s hand, nodded toward Cajun
and exited without another word.  Joining his friends in the hall, they soon
reached the lift and made their way up, through the junction, to the briefing
room.  Zerki, D’Arro and Valerie were waiting.

“Hey, D’Arro,” Taryn said with a fond smile.

He nodded and smiled back.  “Taryn.”

Zerki asked, “Any change?”

“No,” Takeo answered.  “Cajun is confident she’ll
make it, but Fogg is really worried, and that has me worried.”

“I know she’ll pull through.”  Straightening
somewhat, Zerki said, “I mean, she lived as an ellogon slave for years and
still had the wits to seize the first chance she had to escape.  She’s got a
fierce will.”  Drawing a steady breath, she said, “She’ll pull through.”

With a nod, she addressed the room.  “Anyway,
thanks for coming.  I know the timing could be better.  I’ve got a guy
planet-side who assures me he can get us a buyer for all the salvage we pulled
off of Scar.  The thing is, he’s something of an opportunist, and I don’t
entirely trust him.”

“Sounds like a wonderful human being,” said Takeo.

“He’s ghalloom,” Zerki countered, “and he’s
mentally incapable of seeing the long-term benefit in anything.  He’s probably
got a buyer, but he’s also probably got an ambush for us to walk into.”

“Then why’d you pick Huya?” Gavin asked.  “There’s
a lot of places that’ll buy scrap, no questions asked.”

Zerki smiled patiently.  “Because Huya needs it.”

“For what, exactly?”  Gavin regarded her
curiously.

D’Arro leaned forward and offered, “Huya’s LFW.” 
Gavin regarded him blankly.  “League of Free Worlds?”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” said Taryn.

“It’s not a real faction,” Zerki explained.  “LFW
is a zoning prefix that the Union uses to denote secession systems.  It stands
for ‘Liberated Frontier World,’ but what it really means is you’re cut off. 
Union puts all sorts of concessions and guarantees on paper when a system
renounces its membership, but in practice, they hang those systems out to dry. 
Within a couple generations, living standards on most ‘League’ worlds reach
poverty levels.  Huya is no exception.”

Valerie smiled warmly at Zerki.  “You’ve always
had a soft spot for the discarded types.”

“Anyway,” Zerki continued, “after dinner, we’ll be
taking the shuttle down to the Kore starport.”  She called up a holographic map
of the city.  “We’ll stay the night, and tomorrow morning we’ll be getting our
hands on a swamp buggy.  Why drive, you ask?  Because outside the starport,
anything that flies tends to get shot down by bandits and sold for scrap.”  She
glanced to her head of security.  “D’Arro, Taryn, I need you both to carry a
couple blasters, look mean, and be visible.  My guy will only try an ambush if
he thinks he has the advantage.  Takeo, you’re taking point when we get close,
just in case two ospyreans isn’t enough to enforce good business practice. 
Gavin, besides me, you’re the only here who can drive.  Any questions?”

Her companions assured her they had none
presently.  She left the map of Kore on the table and regarded Gavin.  “Let’s
settle that debt,” she said.

“Debt?”

“Dinner.”  She smiled.  “Care to join me?”

Gavin laughed.  “It was supposed to my treat.”

“I’ve got access to more menu options,” she
replied with a friendly wink.

He left with Zerki as the others lingered,
following her to the forward lift.  They soon reached the captain’s cabin.  The
door slid open, and she gestured for him to enter.  Broken up by curved
supports, her transparent ceiling let in the starlight.  Black carpeting
touched crimson walls with black trim.  Her frosted-glass shower was in plain
view at the far end, near a crystal washbasin on one side, her wide bed on the
other.  She had a small, veiled glass table, a storage container, and a
personal video interface seated atop it.

“Nice place,” he whispered.  “Just you?”

She crossed her arms and answered, “Yes, just me.  I
hope you brought your appetite.”  She approached the small glass table, lifting
free its gossamer cover.  Upon it stood two cups of water and a pair of bread
rolls.  She frowned. 

Gavin sat down across from her, though she
remained standing.  “I see you spared no expense,” he teased as he took up a
roll and bit down.  “Well done,” he said through a mouth full of food, “and
done well.  My compliments to the chef.”

Zerki huffed before grumbling, “No, damn it!  This
was supposed to be steak and red wine!”  She strode to her communications panel
and called up the kitchen.  After a brief discussion with the cook on duty, she
returned to Gavin.  “Sorry about that.  They thought I was kidding about the
steak.”

“No worries,” he said with a broad grin, and he
set down his roll.  “Can I ask you something?”

She sat down across from him.  “Ask me anything.”

“Why didn’t you just kidnap me?  I mean, what if I
said no?”

Zerki folded her arms on the table.  “I haven’t
forgotten about your truck, by the way.”  She considered her answer.  “I
strongly believe that people need to make their own choices.  Coming with me
needed to be your choice.  No regrets, even if you said no.”

He shook his head.  “Why me?  Why take the risk? 
From what I’ve been able to gather, Navigators aren’t that hard to come by,
these days.  There are whole agencies that hire them out.  A dozen or so on
Afskya, alone.”  He grabbed his elbows and leaned forward.  “Why?  Why me?”

Leaning back, she puffed her cheeks and answered,
“Because you have to pay contracted Navigators a minimum of three months’
wages, no matter how long you actually need them for.  Because I don’t want to
run a little hauler anymore, and this job is going to be my ticket to something
with a warp drive, something I can hand off to Val and feel good about it.”

Gavin wore a doubting expression.  “Hand off to
Val?  You’re a little young for retirement.”

She leaned closer.  “I’m a lot older than I look,
and I’m not talking gene therapy.”  Her eyes were faraway.  “One day, Val got
this vision of what turned out to be you, and I thought it was a sign.  I could
pick you up, get this last job done, sell the scrap, and be on my merry way. 
Spend the rest of my life being pampered on Varuna, or some other luxury
world.”  A sad chuckle escaped her lips.  “Just… fade away.”

“How… how old are you?”

“Older than you’d believe.”

Realization dawned over Gavin.  “Wait… I
have
heard of you.  I
knew
I’d heard of you!  Zerki Ibarra.  You were all
over the news, what… ten years ago?”

Zerki blushed, and she curtly said, “You have a
very good memory.”

“You were stuck in cryo-freeze, right?  And the
Union ended up paying you a huge settlement!”  He paused at seeing the tears
forming in her eyes, her lips trembling.  “I’m sorry.”

“Please go.”  She pushed back her chair and stood
up.  Wiping at her eyes, she pointed stiffly at the exit.  “Go!”

Gavin got to his feet, his ears and cheeks bright
red.  At a loss for words, he turned and approached the lift.  He didn’t look
back as the elevator arrived, and its doors opened.  “I’m really sorry,” he whispered,
and he stared fixedly at his feet as he boarded.

With leaden shoulders, he made his way to the mess
hall.  Taryn, Takeo and Fogg joined him where he sat and ate, but he had little
conversation to offer.  They talked quietly, their mood somber as they tried
not to think about Filan.

Within the safety of her cabin, Zerki folded over
herself and wept.  It had been ten years, but the rending sorrow and loss she
had felt back then still reared its head at surprising times.  For almost four
hundred years, she had been adrift in the Gudrun system, cryogenically frozen
with eight hundred colonists and six crewmembers in her care.

By the time a salvage team had stumbled upon her colony
ship, everyone else was dead.  She alone had survived, though in the first days
that followed, she wished more than anything she had not.  When she was able,
she dared to read of her husband and children, her grandchildren and their
children, long dead and lost to time.  The company she had worked for paid her
four centuries of wages due, and the Galactic Union had awarded her a generous
sum of money as compensation for unimaginable pain and suffering.

“Pain and suffering,” she tearfully seethed, and
she regained herself, dabbing her sleeve along her eyes and nose.  “Get ahold of
yourself, Zerki.  Keep it together.”  She made her way to the shower, shed her
clothing, and turned on the water.

·· • ··

After dinner was finished, Zerki and her
companions boarded the shuttle and gathered on its bridge.  The hangar bay
yawned open, and she guided the shuttle out into the void, where the broad
curve of Huya spread out before them.  Vast and scattered with clouds, the
planet’s aura was faintly green, and the winding continents below appeared lush
and unspoiled.

As the shuttle approached the cloud line, Zerki
broke the silence.  “You guys should know that the Huyans have no love for the
Union.  It would be easier if we all kept that affiliation to ourselves.  Feel
free to use your real names, but if anyone asks, we’re visiting from Yggdrasil
system, planet Duneyrr.”

“I’ve never heard of that planet or system,”
D’Arro stated.

“That’s because they don’t exist,” replied Zerki.

D’Arro nodded.  “Wait…”

“They won’t be able to confirm or disprove our
point of origin.”

The ospyrean giant nodded in understanding.

“Additionally, Huya has some rules in place—off
the books, mind you—that are intended to make us Union types feel pretty
unwelcome.”

 “What rules?” asked Takeo.  “Do they enforce
them?”

“They’re stupid,” said Valerie.  “And they can’t
enforce them.”

Zerki added, “Tariffs and inflated berthing fees,
that sort of thing.  If the local merchants get wind, you can expect to pay at
least double for everything.”  She held Takeo’s gaze.  “They really can’t
enforce anything, so haggle the merchants down to something fair.  If they
won’t budge, a gentle reminder of the risk they run in crossing the trade
guilds and transport unions should do the trick.”