The Archer's Paradox - The Travis Fletcher Chronicles (34 page)

Vita Nyundo saw the change in tactics. He ordered the fighters to withdraw and make a run for home but it was too late, the cruisers had boxed them in and were picking them off and any that did make it past the blockade ran into the rear guns of the warships bearing down on Otoch. He placed the Interstellar Explorer directly in the path of the advancing ships. If they were allowed to make it to Otoch they could bombard the City’s shield with nothing to stop them. He looked around the bridge and gave his orders. The ships moved towards each other, their forward weapons spitting death at each other as they came.

By the time they passed each other, the Níwlíc Éðel fleet had lost three more ships to the relentless stream of plasma bolts. The front of the Interstellar Explorer had changed from its perfect mirror finish to matt black as less and less energy from the incoming fire was deflected and diverted. Vita Nyundo could feel the ship shudder under each impact. It would not be long before the hull was breeched. Passing between the fleet gave little respite as the fuselage was peppered with fire from the fleet’s defensive batteries, but the returning fire proved to be more than effective as it ripped one warship in half and the flagship was left with gaping holes along its flank.

Vita Nyundo was about to breathe a sigh of relief when the remaining cruisers fell on him from all sides. Having decimated the last of the fighters, they had returned to support the battleships. The cruisers were starting to carve chunks out of the Interstellar Explorer but a burst of speed put him beyond their range for a few moments. Luckily, the vast majority of the ship was unoccupied, so casualties were light, but that was about to change. Vita Nyundo could feel it, and so could the crew. Their good fortune could not last now that their fight had become a toe to toe slugging match.

The last of the torpedoes stopped the cruisers in their tracks but the Beorn, although badly damaged, was still heading for Otoch. Vita Nyundo set off in pursuit, but a lucky salvo from a disabled cruiser struck the rear quarter, penetrated the hull and disrupted one of the energy converters of the system drive, causing the ship to spin out of control. Sensing final victory, Beadu Slecg turned the Beorn around, returned to the stricken vessel and ordered free fire into the spinning ship.

Unable to run or fire back, Vita Nyundo could only wait for the inevitable as the helmsman struggled to gain a modicum of control. Slowly but surely, the ship’s rotation slowed but more and more systems were failing as the incoming fire blew huge chunks out of the once beautiful and sleek ship. The end was near, so he ordered all non-essential personnel into the life pods. Maybe the pods would make it back to Otoch and be rescued, but if they stayed on board they would surely die.

The ship came to rest facing its foe.

“Fire!” The forward pulse cannons spat and the front of the Beorn melted, destroying its offensive weaponry. “Fire!” More plasma bolts struck the exposed internal structure. Again and again as more metal and bodies were ejected into the cold of space. There was no remorse, no feelings of compassion for the people dying at his commands. “Fire!” he had lost friends and family this day just so the remnants of the Xi Scorpii could carry on. His sister and closest friend had both been in the fighter squadrons that had defended him so valiantly. “Fire!” he had to make sure that there was a clear path for the escape pods to get back to Otoch. “Fire!”

On the stricken Beorn, panic had set in as the ship disintegrated around them. They had lost weapons and engines. Fleet Commander Beadu Slecg sat in his chair with a glassy stare on his face. At least he would never have to face an enquiry into this disaster. There would not even be anyone to accuse him of anything. That thought pricked something in the back of his mind.

“Communications! Can you raise the Eardgeard Cwellend?”

“What?” the Communications Officer was halfway out of his mind. Níwlíc Éðel ships did not carry escape pods because they were considered defeatist and took up room that could be used for weapons or ordnance, so there was nowhere to run. “Are you mad?” he shouted insolently. “We need to retreat!” A green beam cracked over Beadu Slecg’s shoulder hitting the Communications Officer full in the face.

The First Officer calmly stepped round the Commander’s dais, sidearm in hand and removed the dead man’s headset before he had slumped to the deck. “The Eardgeard Cwellend?” he asked calmly. “One moment Sir.” he adjusted some controls and looked up. “Yes, Sir. They have been trying to get through. Their communications were taken out in the first wave.”

“Put their Commander through to me.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“This is Comm…” A familiar voice crackled over Beadu Slecg’s headset.

“Annihilate them.”

A further salvo slammed into the wreck of the Beorn splitting the fuselage in two and finally breaching the sanctuary of the Command and Control Centre hidden in the depths of the ship. A satisfied thought crossed Beadu Slecg’s mind as his body was sucked out into the cold vacuum of space.

Travis opened his eyes but he could not remember falling asleep. His eyes took a moment to focus while memories of the previous day came flooding back: the pain of being poisoned, the excitement of the escape, the anticipation of going home, the horror and death of the massacre of his potential saviours and the wonder of flying round Xnuk Ek’’s Mindscape. He was lying on his back on a very comfortable bed. The muted colours and light told him he was no longer in the White Room and neither was he in Xnuk Ek’’s Mindscape. His thoughts crystallised round her name and his mind snapped into sharp focus.

“Star!” he exclaimed, sitting bolt upright.

“It is good to see you again, Travis Fletcher.” The familiar and welcome voice sounded close to his left ear, just out of his eye line.

Travis spun round in surprise to see Xnuk Ek’ lounging in a comfortable looking chair with a smile that could melt an iceberg across her face. Her complexion was the healthy, South American tan he remembered, her eyes sparkled like two bright stars and her smile threatened to out shine the sun. She flowed to her feet in a single fluid motion and stood by his side.

Travis opened and closed his mouth a couple times before his thoughts and voice coalesced into a single purpose. “It’s good to see you too.” he acknowledged finally, surprised to see her looking so well. “Wha…wha...what happened?” he stammered. “Where am I?”

“Do you not remember?” she asked, her smile fading and a worried frown skittering across her brow.

Travis shook the cobwebs out of his head and cast his mind back. He remembered finding the badly injured Xnuk Ek’ in her own Mindscape, then…nothing. He shook his head. “No,” he admitted, “my mind’s a complete blank.”

“Will you let me help you?” she asked.

“Help me what?” he asked.

“To remember.” she replied. “It is important.” she insisted earnestly.

Travis nodded his head. “Ok.” There was something different about her. There was still none of the aloof arrogance of the woman he first met, but neither was she the broken and beaten shell of a person he had met in the wasteland. There was a passion for life about her that was certainly missing from their last encounter and something else he could not put his finger on. Being nearly killed can do that to you, he mused to himself. He felt a silent click in his head as if someone had turned a light or a power socket on.

New sensations and emotions flowed into his brain as if a tap had been turned on. He was flying. He recognised the buildings below from the last time he was in Xnuk Ek’’s Mindscape, but this time it was different. This time he had no control of where he went. This time he was just a spectator. Below him he could see another figure, unaware that he was not alone. The camera dropped down so that Travis was above and behind. He recognised the figure as himself. Fascinated, he watched himself as he banked left and right looking for Xnuk Ek’, with no idea that he was being spied on from above by himself. He could feel his own emotions and hear his own thoughts as the earlier version of himself searched for the injured alien. He saw himself bank left and make a graceful landing next to a prostrate body on the roof of the most central structure in the city. The camera circled round so that he could see both their faces. He could feel Xnuk Ek’’s joy and relief at seeing him again, but she was impossibly weak and hardly able to open her eyes. He had not noticed just how bad she was last time, but there again he was not in the best shape himself either.

He remembered how it ended now. She had just asked for his help.

“Anything.” he replied. “What can I do?”

Xnuk Ek’ just smiled and reached up to touch Travis on the cheek. He closed his eyes and collapsed to one side. She rolled him onto his back and lay beside him with her head on his shoulder and a hand on his chest. “Sleep now and I will see you soon.”

The vision faded and he was back in the room. Travis looked up with a raft of questions on his lips but she held up a hand to forestall him. “The White Room needs human energy to augment the healing process. I would have died in that tank if you had not agreed to help.” she explained, anticipating his questions accurately.

Travis nodded to himself as he remembered his time in a healing tank. “So, that’s what you meant.” he remembered the doctor woman in his Mindscape. So, that was why she was there; sharing her strength.

“And using her abilities to repair neural pathways and your nervous system.” her spontaneous answer to his unspoken musings startled him. “The healing tanks can only do so much by themselves.”

“But I was nearly done in myself.” he protested out loud.

“You are stronger than you know.” Xnuk Ek’ replied. “And I only took enough to help me, then put you into a deep sleep to help you recover.”

“How long…?”

“About four days.” she interrupted. “About a day longer than me.”

“Is that all!” Travis was surprised. “But you…”

“My shield dispersed most of the energy before it collapsed completely. I was very lucky, unlike…”

“But still,” he protested, “I spent weeks in that thing on my way here.”

“The ship had no information on you; it had to learn as you healed.” she replied in explanation, although it made no sense to Travis.

He changed the subject. “So how did I get here? And where is here?”

“I made sure you stayed unconscious so you could recover properly and I brought you here. I thought it better than leaving you on the floor of the White Room.” she paused for a moment before adding, “And so I could watch you sleep.”

“Watch me sleep!” Travis backed away on the bed from her. He found the thought of someone watching him sleeping slightly creepy.

“Please do not be angry with me, Travis Fletcher.” she pleaded, suddenly aware that her candour may have put their fragile friendship in jeopardy. “I used to watch Lak’in when we were together. It is said that the face of a sleeper can reveal the true person inside.” she paused for a moment cocked her head coyly. “Also, you have not yet learned to shield your mind during sleep.”

Travis bit his tongue this time. He knew how dangerous it was to accuse a Xi Scorpii of prying into someone’s thoughts. Instead he said “You could see my dreams?” But he put an edge to his voice to show he disapproved. “I don’t remember dreaming at all.”

“Not your dreams, but I saw what you were, I saw what you have become and I saw what you could be.” she finished, with a serious inflection to her voice emphasising the last statement.

Travis remembered the old doctor’s final remarks to him before Xnuk Ek’ came for him and he felt as if there should have been an ‘unless’ at the end of that sentence. “And…?” he was not sure what to say as his thoughts collided with each other in his head and he was not in the mood for more cryptic crap. She looked away to hide her face, obviously avoiding a direct answer.

She changed the subject. “I also took the opportunity to prepare the dead for return to Otoch.” Travis’ gaze snapped up at the mention of the massacred crew. He was about to make a comment but Xnuk Ek’ was not finished. “I believe your people have complicated rituals to honour your dead.”

Travis nodded but decided not to elaborate. It did not seem appropriate.

“The Xi Scorpii are much longer lived and there are so few of us left, so death is a rare occurrence.” she explained.

Until I arrived.
Travis thought to himself.

If Xnuk Ek’ picked up on the thought, she gave no hint of it. “Rituals of death have been lost for generations, but the pain of loss is that much more acute.” she paused for a moment and Travis leant forward to stroke her hair and put his arms round her shoulders to comfort her. She did not resist and leant into him for a moment. “Do not be sad for me.” she said softly as she gently disentangled herself from Travis’ embrace. “I took the time to mourn while I was in the Healing Tank.”

Travis gave her a quizzical look but said nothing.

“Time has no meaning in the Mindscape,” she began in way of explanation, “so I was able to make enough ‘time’ to contemplate Lak’in and our time together.” she finished more brightly.

Travis thought he understood, but decided this was not the time for a philosophical discussion about time. “Where are they now?” he asked. “I would like to pay my respects to them all as well.”

“They are in one of the White Rooms.” she answered. A new look of respect flitted across her eyes for a moment.

“And the soldiers?” he asked, with a good deal more bite than he intended.

“I have ejected their bodies towards the sun.” she replied with an uncharacteristic edge to her voice. “I have no wish to look upon them again.” her voice and countenance finally cracked, her eyes, filling with tears, looked like two pools of mercury.

After a moment, her countenance brightened again and she took his hand. “Come.” she insisted, tugging him to his feet. “I have something to show you.” she finished, as if she had just come to a decision, urging him through the cabin towards the door.

They were at one end of a short corridor. It was short only by Xi Scorpii standards, with about ten doors per side opening onto it. At the far end Travis could see some bounce tubes, but Xnuk Ek’ steered Travis in the opposite direction. They were in a parabolic shaped room on a mezzanine floor. Judging by the array of equipment and displays, Travis deduced they were on the bridge, but it was not the technology that held his attention, it was the fact that the whole ceiling and the walls were transparent down to the height of the equipment desks, just below chest height for Travis, the Xi Scorpii being somewhat taller than the average Earthman. He fought down a wave of vertigo to marvel at the splendour for a moment. Off to the left, port side, Phaqsi, Otoch’s moon, dominated view, pale grey and completely alien. In front was Otoch itself, brown and dead and uninteresting when compared to seeing Earth from space, which, Travis reminded himself, he had not done. He was unconscious when he left, or dead, to be precise, but he was careful to keep his thoughts to himself. It was the stars that stole the show however. They blanketed the dome above him; tiny pricks of light in shades of red, blue, yellow and white. The dome, like the great window in the observation room, seemed to enhance colours of even the tiniest point. He could even see purple and magenta swathes of dust clouds arching overhead. No sooner had he focused on one group of stars than he saw more beyond and more and more. He felt as if he was being sucked into the centre of the universe from where he stood.

Xnuk Ek’’s insistent tug brought him back as she led him right to the apex of the parabola. Her mood turned sombre for a moment. “While you were sleeping I managed to contact Otoch.” she began. “There has been a great battle and the Children of Éðel have been defeated. You are safe.” she proclaimed. “We are safe. We can go home as soon as a shuttle can be sent for us.” she finished.

“There is no such thing as a
great
battle.” Travis snapped back. “How many people died in this ‘great battle’?” His question bit hard. “How many? Hundreds?” he saw her expression change. “Thousands! How many thousands? No, don’t answer that. All because of me? I don’t think I can take any more of this!” Faces of the dead he knew and those he never met swirled round behind his eyes as they got sucked into an abyss created by his mind. He felt himself slipping into a depressive slump and the tears began to well up behind his eyes.

Xnuk Ek’ reached out with her senses and massaged the troubled Earthman to calm him. “Please, Travis Fletcher.” she put a hand on his shoulder. “The Children of Éðel would have come sooner or later, that much was inevitable. We all knew it but we hoped that we could bring them back into the Xi Scorpii family, but some wounds run too deep to heal. Remember the dream I gave you?”

He did. She asked him if they were still worth saving after wreaking so much destruction on themselves. It was a rhetorical question that made no sense at the time, but bits of the puzzle were clicking into place the longer he stayed with her. His heart went out to her. “I’m sorry, Star.” he put his hand over hers, squeezed it gently then took it from his shoulder and kissed the palm. Xnuk Ek’ was surprised by the tenderness and compassion conveyed in that one simple act. “I suppose I still feel so small and helpless when compared to all this.” he waved at the ceiling. “I don’t like not being in control, so I kick out against it. It’s a failing of mine.” he finished with a small smile.
One of many.
He added mentally.

Xnuk Ek’ looked the small man from Sol 3 up and down. Was this the same primitive that she had brought back from their expedition? The man that spat and cursed at his saviours, who had trouble understanding even the most simple of concepts but who stood in front of her now showing more courage, compassion and honour than many of her own kind, including herself? It seemed he had not only forgiven her for trying to kill him but had risked his own life to save hers. Or was it her that had changed? He had called her a ‘superior, self-righteous bitch’ when they first met. The insult lost something in translation, but the sentiment was clear. It was not just him. She remembered humiliating that little
Paal Kanik
in the Gaming Centre. The same
Paal Kanik
that came to her to enlist her to help Travis Fletcher escape. She had misjudged so many people so badly. But no more. Her loss of honour had given her cause to rethink her life and her attitude towards others. And then there was what she had seen while he slept.