Authors: Ronan Frost
Myshia regained her footing, keeping her feet spread
incase another jolt should come. "How much longer?"
"Not long." Shaun had already accessed the nav
computer's files and had copied the log to the pod message. The
co-ordinates of the Urisa were a long string of numbers and letters
decipherable only to a computer. It was written in the blocked
lettering of the Hartrias language but the comm-monitors of the
Federation should have no trouble reading it. He paused, then,
smiling ruefully, added a line of Hartrias text at the end of the
message.
Flight Lieutenant Shaun Lowry, class 1 Federation of
Human States Nav/fighter, ID: 98-3424002.
He just looked at the flashing cursor for a second,
his mind whirling. After three years imprisonment he was finally
about to communicate with his own people. A touch of pride coiled
within his chest as the lines rolled across the screen. Hitting the
activate key the message flashed once before disappearing. He
watched, unaware he was holding his breath, as the communications
computer interpreted his command. Then he saw a brief flash from
below and, pushing his forehead to the flexi-glass of the viewport,
looked out into space to watch the messenger pod shoot from the
Urisa with a yellow tail of fire in its wake. Then, abruptly, it
was gone. It had entered the jumptunnel.
Shaun turned back to Myshia, a broad smile plastered
across his face. "It's done!" He felt elated. His actions had
tipped the balance back in favour of the Federation. Now all that
remained was to get off the Urisa before she shook herself
apart.
It wasn't standard combat practice, Shaun knew, to
race blind out into a corridor of an enemy ship. But his mind was
fuelled with elation and the thought of escape overruled his
instinct of caution.
The four Hartrias security patrol guards saw them
immediately.
Defenceless and weaponless Shaun stumbled backwards,
but it was already too late. Cursing his haste Shaun tripped over
and fell, his eyes never leaving the advancing armour wall of the
marching guards.
Shaun paused, brows furrowing. The guards were moving
with not-quite right synchronisation as they trooped forward.
Normally Hartrias sec-pat guards moved like an interconnected
machine controlled by the one mind - but this time they seemed to
be slightly out of step.
Black armour glistened in the fluorescent light as
wide bored rifles stared Shaun down the throat, the visors on the
guards' helmets reflecting impassion and cold inhumanity. They wore
medium level battle armour - vacuum proof, entirely self sufficient
and armoured with the arsenal of a tank. One guard held the leash
of a Lectar as the exoskeletoned beast snarled and clawed.
Shaun splaying his hands, showing he was defenceless,
knowing that any form of resistance would bring four beams of
molecular dissipaters arcing through his body. The foremost of the
guards moved forward, rifle still held steady and level.
"Shaun!" Myshia shrieked as the guard caught her by
her tunic and wrenched it sharply.
"Hey!" Leaping, Shaun caught the sec-pat guard in a
flying tackle. His sweaty hands slipped from the nearly
frictionless black armour, face ploughing unceremoniously into the
solid surface. Before he had time to recover he felt both arms
pulled sharply behind him back and heard the distinctive clink of a
pair of cuffs closing.
He was jerked to his feet, wrists bound together by
the tight links of the cuffs. Still dazed he saw that Myshia too
was cuffed and helpless. The sec-pat guards looked at each other,
exchanging gestures. Shaun watched with growing confusion; Hartrias
guards were never like this. Communication between men was kept to
an absolute minimum and never before had Shaun seen guards look as
if they were arguing! It did not take much to interpret the
argument; one of the guards obviously wanted to keep Shaun and his
companion alive, but one of the others kept motioning offensively
with his rifle. Holding his breath, Shaun found himself praying
that the guard in favour of their being kept alive won.
Then Shaun knew. All the pieces suddenly fell into
place; the warbot, the security systems, the argument between the
sec-pat. There could be only one answer.
Avatar had shut down.
In his excitement Shaun momentarily forgot the
guards. "Capac and Ashian - they did it! Yeee-har! No wonder you
guys are pis-"
A savage wrenching reminded Shaun what the guards
thought of his conversation. Shaun fell silent, but Myshia's eyes
now glowed with private satisfaction. So Ashian is still alive, she
thought.
The guards reached their decision and Shaun was
dragged in tow by the scruff of his helicasuit. Caught in an
unbreakable steel grasp Myshia too was hauled along as the sec-pat
guards trooped down the length of the narrow corridor. Shaun
considered reaching out and clawing his fingers into the wall or
grabbing the grating of the floor, but gave it up; the guards would
shoot without a moments hesitation. It seemed they only refrained
from shooting them because of the attempts of the other guard. His
eyes moved left and right, looking for escape, but no opportunity
presented itself. The guard holding the straining leash of the
Lectar walked directly behind them, the beast keeping a close and
bloodthirsty eye upon the prisoners. Shaun would just have to go
where the sec-pat were taking them.
The brief respite allowed Shaun a moment of
recuperation where he could slot together the confused events that
had befallen them. He was still incredulous that Capac, the often
over-confident Eloprin hunter, had managed to pull the plug on a
piece of machinery belittling his own intelligence. He thought too
of Ashian, wondering if the quick witted but sometimes morbid
Currach had survived in the midst of a species several stages up
the evolutionary ladder. And of course there was Myshia, who had
experienced a brief period of telepathy and was able to heal wounds
with a simple touch. There were so many questions but Shaun knew
one thing; the natives were more than what met the eye.
She felt the sharp edges of the grating graze against
her lower back, unable to move with her hands firmly secured behind
her back. In her mind Myshia was calm, forcing her breathing to
become slow and controlled. The strange sensations seemed to be
coming with increased frequency now, beating at the inside of her
skull as if it were a drum. It seemed as if her mind had opened,
the edges bordering her existence for all the years of her
childhood breaking down like a cracking dam wall.
Now, in the hands of the towering Sunlords, that
power seemed to have deserted her. It was a frustrating sensation;
as soon as she caught a glimpse of the power it was snatched away.
Deep inside she knew she was going to die at the hands of the
Sunlords, creatures armoured like rock pillars able to withstand
every ravage nature could produce. She reached out with her mind,
knowing it was useless, calling for Ashian. But even the thin line
of thought which had connected her mind to the currach's had fallen
into that darkness. Gone was the link, the feelings of telepathy
and the tingling in her fingers when she had dispelled her power
into Shaun's injured shoulder. She did not know if that power would
rebuild its reserves in time. It would be too late, anyhow, to save
them. She forced an image of the Elder into her mind, but the
picture was ghostly and indistinct as her memory failed to
correctly picture the deceased leader.
It was with conscious effort that she forced the
emotions away, determined to remain iron faced and proud before her
death. That was the proper way to dignify her race and all that she
had stood for.
Death seemed easier now that they had succeeded in
their quest to save their forest and home. Eyes closed, breathing
so deeply it was almost hyperventilating, death seemed to be the
quickest way for Myshia to obtain rest and oblivion.
Sparks of life caught her unexpected in the cushiony
fabric of her brain. The motion of light was like beacons seen by a
ship far at sea - small and fragile yet reassuring in that vast
blackness of a clouded night sky.
Myshia's eyes snapped open.
The signal was growing stronger, a thread blowing
towards her through the abyss. Wherever it was the Sunlords were
taking them, it was closer to Ashian.
* * *
A gloved hand rubbed across the touch pad mounted
flush in the wall and the door of the skidship hissed open. The
security-patrol guard stepped inside, multi-barrelled rifle across
his chest at the ready. Khanyc cursed as he squinted through the
shaded visor, aware that the dead internal microphones and computer
assisted targeting link to his retinal implants now hindered his
vision. Ever since the deactivation of Avatar it seemed Khanyc's
eyes and ears had been disconnected. He had been part of the escort
that had led the tech squad down to the main databanks and had seen
himself the destruction that the meltdown had created before the
emergency fire control systems had extinguished the flame. Repair
now deemed impossible, all personnel of the Urisa were scrambling
to escape craft, a wailing klaxon siren in the command room warning
all of the imminent danger.
The sec-pat guard had teamed with several others of
his colleagues, determined not to relent the ship to destruction.
Without Avatar the comm-systems were all disconnected and the
command bridge was nothing more than a collection of motherboards
and powerless banks of monitors. Part of the team volunteering to
search for the Admiral, who had disappeared three hours ago, Khanyc
and his comrades had been heading for the comm-lab when they had
stumbled upon the two strange intruders.
Taken off guard Khanyc had come within a hair's
breadth of pulling the trigger and stripping the molecules from the
intruders that very second. Unconsciously Khanyc cast a suspicious
look from the corner of his eye at Moarn, the sec-pat guard who had
insisted they keep the intruders alive. Khanyc could not understand
Moarn's sudden change in temperament, and had argued strongly that
they could not spare the time to worry about prisoners. But Moarn
had insisted, providing reasons which now seemed more than a little
flawed.
Scorning to himself Khanyc shook away any doubts.
These were confused times without Avatar to co-ordinate their
movements and until the Rplore could take over they would have to
stay alive. Khanyc stepped aside as the three other sec-pat guards
stepped into the cabin of the skidship, closing the door as soon as
they had stepped inside. The control panel had fallen back into
manual mode, but Khanyc was able to program the small computer with
their destination. He was glad the skidships had remained on-line
for it saved the exhausted sec-pat guards the long walk back to the
control centre. The skidships were used aboard the Urisa for
transport and were shaped not unlike a subway train; the
bullet-nosed vehicles rushed through narrow tunnels along a pair of
skids, levitated slightly above them by electromagnetic force,
propelled up to speeds of 250 kph. The tubes in which the skidships
travelled were in vacuum, considerably lessening drag forces but
creating the need for the docking platforms to be entirely
airtight.
The skidship jolted forward, accelerating smoothly to
gain momentum. Khanyc braced himself against the stabilisation bars
as the carriage reached peak speed, the walls flashing past the
windows, lights blurring with speed. He watched numerous flickering
of yellow as they sped through cross-roads, aware that they were
other skidships. In his five years as a sec-pat guard he had never
seen the system so active, and now that the computer no longer
directed traffic it was only by chance an accident didn't occur.
Upon reflecting, Khanyc was glad that most of the crew were
planetside constructing the skycannons, else this system would be
total chaos.
His heart missed a beat as a terrible feeling of
unreality washed over him. Dropping from the ceiling his feet arced
downward towards the Sunlord's helmeted head. That instant seemed
frozen in time and Ashian was aware of every single detail; the way
Shaun spun, mouth dropping open in surprise. In that instant Ashian
suddenly wasn't so sure if this was the right thing to do as the
confidence he had felt earlier dissipated as incoming fear clouded
his senses. He hadn't known what impulse had made him step into the
skid-ship in the first place, but deep inside he had a feeling - as
if something of a higher intelligence were directing his motions.
He had persuaded Capac to take cover with him in the roof supports
of the skidship, taking cover from what Ashian didn't know and
waiting for something that was only a gut instinct.
Capac was about to give up, insisting they head away
back to the docks, when the doors had slid open and the armoured
Sunlords had stepped inside. It caught Ashian completely by
surprise when he saw Shaun pulled unceremoniously behind, followed
closely by Myshia.
Then Ashian knew what that guiding instinct had been
all along - Myshia.
They had little time to plan. Ashian had looked
across at Capac, who nodded affirmative. Breathing deeply three
times, Ashian had let go and plummeted down upon his friends'
captors.
With a crunch and jolt the instant snapped into
splinters and events happened faster than the eye could see. Ashian
rolled as he hit the ground, aware that his fall had brought the
unprepared Sunlord stumbling to his knees. The wall caught him,
arresting his roll as he slammed into a corner. Scrambling to his
feet Ashian saw a flash of movement as Capac struck out, his blow
catching a Sunlord across the visor. The blow recoiled harmlessly
and Capac fell away, the Sunlord recovering and swinging the end of
his rifle around.
Ashian bawled and leapt again, clinging to the end of
the rifle with both arms, aware of but not caring that the armoured
arm could turn and crush the life from his lungs. A blast of
rippling molecular stripper fire smote the floor, Ashian pushing
the Sunlord's aim a metre to the right, saving Capac's life.