"Empires": The Ethics of Retribution

[Coyote]

“The Ethics of Retribution" Part One

Arawn Brand sat and stared at the body of his girlfriend, probably would-have-been wife, and asked himself how in the hell he’d gotten into this situation. His breathing resounded like a rasping saw in the tight confines of the spacesuit helmet. Her sightless eyes seemed to be looking for something, combing the heavens for some explanation for her current condition.

Brand could scarcely believe it. Hours ago, the thought resonated in his stunned mind, not two hours ago she was so alive, in my arms, everything was so-- he shook his head. That was before...

The cockpit lights-- those that were left undamaged-- lit up and the now familiar red warning lights flashed through the dark. Brand imagined that the bored female voice of the ship’s computer was saying something, but in the airless void of the shattered command cabin there would be no sound.

The ship’s intercom had ceased to function as well, so he couldn’t pick up any commands via the suit radio, either. It couldn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know, however. Within minutes, at most, the hull would collapse and the CCTV Professor Julien Montfort would very soon break up into so many pieces of spaceborne scrap.

Brand tore his eyes away from the grossly decompressed and asphyxiated body of Lau Maktla, the beautiful girl of society who had not cared that he came from nothing... and at the rate things are going, will probably end up as nothing if I don’t act now. He absently fumbled for the straps that held him to the pilot’s chair but hesitated. Red warning lights his mind recalled, that means--

The ship rocked with the impact of another torpedo, and the resulting explosion could be felt wrenching the ship in silent, airless destruction. Nothing went sailing through the cockpit, though, everything unsecured had already been sucked out of one of the many holes that dotted the little ship’s hull. Like Lau had gone sailing, and Dirk, and Professor Ghoki, and the rest of the students and instructors.

Brand unbuckled the straps and ran as fast as he could across the now warped and buckled deck towards the center of the ship. The pressure hatch to the bridge only opened halfway before stopping, jammed. He braced his leg against a console and put his back to the hatch, and heaved as hard as he could.

The hatch slid open a few more centimeters, enough to get through. He squeezed through as another explosion tore into the hull, deep within the engineering compartment. The hatch slid shut just as he pulled his foot clear.

Abruptly, the lights flickered and died, leaving only the battery-powered safety strips illuminated along the edges of the deck. Brand followed those, switching on his suit light and running towards the escape pods. Halfway there he abruptly fell face forward and went sailing through the air. The deck plates had begun to lose their gravity, and Brand pitched headfirst towards the far bulkhead. He put his arms forward to catch himself the way he’d been shown years ago.

Hurtling towards him was another figure, suddenly visible in the intense, flickering lights behind him-- “Lau! Dirk!” he shouted in vain into the suit comm. The figure didn’t answer, but hurtled towards him on a collision course. He suddenly realized that the figure was his own shadow flying across the bulkhead like a ghost.

Catching himself-- and the shadow-- on a bulkhead safety handle next to another hatch, Brand turned to look behind him to see the cause of the intense lights. The hull was being punctured by energy bolts as big around as his body, smashing through the old ship as if it weren’t there.

Goddamnit, haven’t you done enough!? he wanted to scream--and probably did, without realizing it. He was terrified, trembling, nothing in his life had made him feel mortal, naked fear like those energy beams did, slowly firing in their three-part timed sequence.

The part of the ship where the beams intersected began to buckle and break into two sections, and Brand watched in fascinated horror as the entire bow and bridge section was carved away from the main hull and sat, drifting seperately, not three meters away from him. His body was numb as he tried, vainly, to open the hatch. It was sealed shut, the frame hopelessly twisted around it.

Outside, the source of Brand’s rabid mixture of fear and hate drifted into view, as the rounded bow of the Destroyer poked its way towards the front of the free-floating debris. He clung to the safety-handle, his hand exerting more pressure that he would have thought humanly possible, crouching in the zero-gravity and praying for the first time in his life, begging for the simple blessing of being unnoticed. Just pass by, unnoticed, I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead, okay...?

The Destroyer spun around, turning to face the wreckage, as if trying to peer inside and look for him. It seemed alive, cruel, murderous... the angular bridge and blocky outboard engine sections adding a meanness to the otherwise sleek, rounded cigar shape of the main hull. Lances of energy flashed from the portside blaster turrets. Brand braced himself for another mad tumbling, but none came. He looked ahead at the almost motionless forward hull, slowly drifting away, unaffected by the fire. What the hell are they shooting at? his mind demanded. There was nothing in front of the ship but some debris and--

“You fucking lizard bastards!” he screamed, tears running down his cheeks. The bodies of his friends-- and Lau-- were being incinerated. “You cold-blooded shits!”

He launched himself up, as if towards the Destroyer but caught himself on the wrecked hull. His fear had begun to convert itself into a burning, driving hatred. Brand was no longer frozen in primitive terror, but was now free to act in ways he had not thought possible.

Adrenaline carried signals through his brain and body at speeds faster than he would comprehend as he raced to the outer hull and crawled outside, pulling his way along the surface of the once-ship-now-wreckage without regard for his own life.

Each handhold guided him to another, each toehold levered him closer to whatever he expected to find-- an external hatch, leading to the engineering section. Somewhere back here would be Chief Engineer Shavi’s burned corpse, Brand thought to himself.

At the end of the engineering section, the ship’s running lights continued to provide some light. Illuminated by those, and the flickers of energy lancing out from that damned Destroyer, Brand was able to find the emergency override switch for the airlock. It opened, slowly, as a dying creature might slowly raise a last limb to defend itself from one more swipe of a predator’s claws. The Destroyer stopped firing, and began maneuvering towards the smashed rear hull.

“Oh, you saw that, did you?” Brand growled in the helmet. He threw himself into the airlock as the massive prow of the Destroyer began to loom overhead, turrets spinning and questing for a new target, the cannon muzzles sniffing for scent of their prey. Brand cycled the airlock and laughed maniacally at the computer’s insistence to maintain the formality even though huge chunks had already been torn out of the opposite bulkhead.

Through the stern, Brand could vividly see stars through a giant mounting that had once secured one of the Montfort’s engines. A charred skull grinned at him, the remains of the Chief Engineer.

The first shot had been an energy beam through the engine compartment, and the atmosphere inside had flash-ignited. Brand doubted that Shavi had even realized what had happened to him, in fact the skull seemed to greet him with an innocent grin, the vacant eyes of the little wanni seeming to ask what’s up? Brand nodded a greeting and vaulted through the low gravity to the hatch at the forward bulkhead.

The hatch opened and stayed open, the energy surge alerting the crew of the Destroyer that there was still some activity inside. Another round of firing crumpled the rear hull and shook another engine loose from its mountings, its bolts sheared. Brand ducked inside, bracing himself as the hull was thrashed about by the violent impact of the blaster bolts.

They’re too close to use torpedoes now, Brand realized. How comforting. He reached the escape pod and opened the access hatch to it with the manual crank-- keep the bastards guessing, he told himself as he swore under his breath. He blinked sweat and tears from his eyes as the dark maw of salvation opened up before him. He dove into the cramped pod and slammed the internal hatch closed behind him.

I’ll ram them, his mind declared in white-hot fury, so help me god, I’ll ram them with as much speed as I can get out of this pod. A little self-guided torpedo. He powered up the pod and cycled the launch sequence, but the remains of the dead ship around him would not let go. The pod was stuck, and its power readings were alerting the Destroyer that their survivor was still fighting.

“Goddammit!” Brand screamed, slamming his fist into the console of the pod. The red lights still shone on the DOCKING CLAMPS SECURED readout. “Fuck you!” he screamed again, kicking at the access panel and knocking it away. He was pitched to the floor as the ship was buffetted again by energy blasts. Something slammed against the hull and he realized he had no time left.

Pulling the wires out of the emergency override circuits, he rammed his thumb into the EMERGENCY RETROFIRE touchpad hard enough to shatter it. Still inside the tube, the main drives of the lifepod began to fire, pushing a massive gout of flame out, around the pod and into space like a volcano. The Destroyer crew had an easy flare to alert them now.

The pod finally blasted free, the interior heat pushed beyond safe capacity for human life. Brand still had his suit on, which was insulated enough to keep him alive but drenched in sweat. Like a cannon shot, the pod hurtled out of its almost-tomb, a small living seedling desperately carrying the last survivor away from the corpse of the Julien Montfort.

Brand looked back, staring vacantly at the wrecked vessel. Who in the hell was Julien Montfort? he asked himself. He tried to see where Lau’s body had been and could not tell. A new resolve gripped him-- just get away. Live.

“Like hell,” he vowed, grabbing the little pod’s directional tiller. He spun the pod around and aimed it for the Destroyer. The pod locked on, and hurtled towards the larger vessel, its simple computer locking onto the vessel as a possible source of rescue. Brand contemplated a bridge shot and lined up on the boxlike structure of the Destroyer’s dorsal section.

Punching the thrust controls he watched the distance close, his face breaking into a feral and terrifying grin. The pod, however, seemed to have a mind of it’s own. In a sudden wrenching maneuver, the side thrusters fired, sending Brand against a padded bulkhead.

“What the hell--?” he glared at the viewscreen. WEAPONS LOCK DETECTED, it alerted him, NO APPROACH/EVASIVE MANEUVERS, it said. “Dammit!” he yelled again at no one in particular-- the pod, the Destroyer, the lizards, the wrecked Julien Montfort... Brand pounded his fist into the console. The pod sped away from the Destroyer as fast as its tiny engine could take it, which wouldn’t be fast enough. He sat at the console and pried it open as the pod began a slow turn in another direction, the Destroyer gaining quickly.

Tearing into the console’s components, he looked for a way to override the safety systems completely. He activated the manual piloting function and took control of the pod. He thought for a minute. What do we have in the area that I can use? He tried to calm himself down, but the image of his friends, and Lau, being torn out of the hull haunted him.

Asteroids, he remembered. They had discovered a system full of asteroids and some pathetic little dustball planets. They had just started marking the bigger rocks as navigation hazards when the Destroyer jumped them without warning.

The ship had been hounding them for almost two days, chasing them and threatening them, but never taking any hostile action. That all changed about half an hour ago, he figured, looking at the pod’s clock. So much change in so little time, he thought, his eyes still blurred with tears. An hour ago, Lau and I were on a sunbeam. Hell, I was going to goddamn propose to her, since I wasn’t a broke student anymore... He shook his head, droplets flying out in the zero-gravity pod and spattering on the insides of his helmet. He didn’t notice.

In the viewscreen, the asteroid field loomed. I hope they’re god-damned stupid enough to follow me in here, he grinned at the thought. His reflection in the viewscreen reminded him of the skull of Chief Engineer Shavi. Brand’s teeth clenched hard enough to make his temples throb. He entered the edge of the asteroid field and his heart rate went into hyperlight velocities. The only thing this pod has over that bastard, Brand figured, looking at the Destroyer, which now filled the entire rear viewscreen, is maneuverability.

The tactic seemed to work, the Destroyer slowed considerably and increased its firing-- some guns tracking Brand’s little pod, some firing at the surrounding asteroids, sending some spinning, crashing into their neighbors, and sending them spinning as well. Brand kept close to the larger rocks, always careful to maneuver one between himself and the Destroyer.

Soon, the vessel was far behind, hacking its way through the field of now dangerously-tumbling asteroids. Brand put the main engines on standby and spun the pod around, then flared briefly and cut his velocity to almost nothing. The hard maneuvers tossed him around the tiny pod-- he had forgotten to strap himself in. He relished the bruises and the pain.

Brand sat and took in his surroundings. Far away, the Destroyer hovered in space, firing, moving forward, then stopping and firing some more. Slowly the asteroids were cleared away from it, but the field was becoming dangerously like a pond with ripples of increasing size.

Brand absently strapped himself in and tried to gauge how long it would take until the advancing line of rocky chaos would reach him. I need to find some cover. He looked at the viewscreen and sized up the large rocky mass beside his pod. Almost five kilometers. Should do for awhile, he decided. He gently nudged the pod sideways, using the small maneuvering thrusters. At this distance, with all this interference, they won’t get a good fix on my power use. The pod settled into a small crater and Brand immediately shut down all power. The dark pod could now run only on batteries, if he wanted to remain undetected.

Brand sat back and stared at the now dark viewscreen. He realized he still had his spacesuit on and reached up to remove the helmet, only remembering to check the pressure seal on the pod when it was too late. It was irrelevant anyway. Either he died in the pod from asphyxiation, or he died in space at the guns of the Destroyer. But soon there will be third option, he figured, I can be crushed by tumbling asteroids, too. He sighed and leaned back.

The pod pinged and popped as it cooled but soon those noises also faded into nothingness. For the first time, Brand knew what total silence was. He was too numb to move. He barely cared enough to breathe. He thought he was dead.

How long he sat he could not tell. He hadn’t looked at the pod’s clock since leaving the Montfort. He had no idea how long he’d been in the pod at all, much less in the asteroids or sitting, silent, uncaring, in the crater of the asteroid.

So he wasn’t surprised when he finally did look at the clock again, and saw that it had been at least eight hours since ejecting from his previous life in a gout of flame, torn away from half the things he had built and dreamed of...after the other half of the things he’d dreamed of had first been torn away from him.

Eight hours, he figured. Just eight and a half, nine hours ago, my god, Lau... He remembered her soft body under him, her kisses, the smell of her hair, her warmth... I should have asked you then, he cursed himself, frowning, unmindful of the tears streaming down his face again. Lau, will you marry me? He put his head in his hands and sobbed, uncontrollably, the sound loud in the tight, silent confines of the pod.

*** ***

Brand awoke because something was wrong. The pod was dark, silent, not a thing could be heard in the little metal tomb. As his eyes opened he became aware of his surroundings and he jerked awake with a start, gasping, filling his lungs with sharp, cold pain.

His eyes tried to water but couldn’t, and he felt as if his eyelids were coated with coarse sand. He tried to stand but couldn’t and panicked. I’m paralyzed! his mind screamed in horror. To die here, alone, paralyzed, withering... Wake up, you dumbshit, another voice seemed to say in his head. You’re strapped to the chair. He shook his head to clear the fog in his mind but it did not seem to help. His head hurt and he was cold, freezing. His limbs were stiff, his arms an agony of movement. He reached up to undo the straps to the pilot’s chair.

His fingers refused to work, he had to will each movement, force each gesture no matter how minute. His nerves shrieked with what little agony they could feel, his hands and fingers themselves were mostly numb. His left hand rested on the buckle near his right shoulder, but would not move further. He tried to make the thumb and forefinger squeeze, but to no avail. His hand trembled as he tried to force it to work.

He imagined his nerves, muscles, and bones like an old, weary mechanical structure. Servos and motors, crusted in ice, slowly breaking free, ice melting as the mechanism built up heat. Muscles became cables and pulleys, creaking slowly to lift the frame, warm oil instead of blood being pushed through pipes. Steam would rise as the machine slowly, slowly, re-energized itself...

I’m sorry, are you trying to accomplish something? his body mocked. Why is it important? What are you going to do-- take your little pod and fly away? He exhaled a fierce snarl, his warm breath sending a cloud of vapor into the cockpit. He looked again at his hand, cursing it to move, to break free of the light dusting of frost that had, indeed, gathered on it and everything else in the pod.

His wrist trembled and his hand began to wake up, freshly-realized pain beginning to assert itself as circulation slowly started to take back what belonged to it. He now pictured frozen meat soaking up blood, and beginning to live again. All the while his mind screamed at him to give up, that the effort was not worth the pain... Just what in the hell do you intend to do, anyway, once you get free? He had no answer for himself. It was only important that he get up from the chair.

Another idea struck him-- you have two hands, boy. Why didn’t he think of that before? He dismissed the thought and reached up, numbly, with his other hand. It was just as numb as the first. Now what the hell do I do? he wondered, this doesn’t help at all. I have two frozen claws. He sat back in the chair, letting his hands fall to his lap.

His left hand seemed to energize a bit, as the blood coursed down inside it, but not enough to allow him control or movement. The pins-and-needles feeling kept him from falling back into an exhausted sleep. He had no idea he was so tired, or that simply unbuckling from a chair could be such painstaking work. But hadn’t he just been sleeping? The pain in his neck and back seemed to say so. How long had he been out?

The clock had little to offer. It reported the time exactly as it was designed to, and no more. Was it twenty-two hundred the same night? Or the following evening? That would be rediculous, he decided.

But then, his body had enough time to go numb, for the cold to take over, for the frost to develop... but what did that mean? I forgot to look and see if we were facing the sun or not, he realized. But if were facing the sun, I would be hot, right? He looked at the viewscreen, dark as he’d left it, the battery controls just out of reach and covered in a fine layer of frost. Would they even work? he wondered.

He reached towards the consol but stopped, hooking his fingers on the edge. Power brings death, he realized. The lizards. They’re out there, searching for me, he remembered. The massive prow of the Destroyer pushing its way overhead as he furiously fought to get into the hatch... But the batteries should be okay, remember? his more rational mind told him.

He placed his finger on the touchpad, amused and relieved that the frozen limb didn’t snap off. Somewhere in the back of the pod, an electronic hiss begin to fill the cockpit. Brand realized that the steady resonance of electronics filled everyone’s daily life, and was never noticed. Now it sounded like being in the middle of a waterfall.

Slowly, the system re-energized itself. The computer went through its self-test, red lights flickering on all across the board. Brand felt a brief surge of panic, remembered the Montfort’s warning lights before each torpedo hit, as each energy cannon acquired a fresh target lock... But nothing happened to shake the little pod. If they’ve locked on to you now, he realized, there won’t even be enough time for any shaking...

He felt the calm of finality wash over him, and with it a curious warmth. He took another deep, cold breath, coughing as the stale, icy air collided with his lungs. He reached over to the viewscreen and flicked it on. It was instantly filled with static, which slowly cleared, revealing only sections of the heavens at a time. Brand watched in rapt fascination, as if seeing the beginnings of creation itself.

Brand stared for what could have been hours or hepts, he neither knew nor cared. He glanced at the clock but it only told him that an hour had gone by, and he was no closer than before to knowing what day it was. How long ago since I saw Lau? He asked himself. He suddenly realized he had no idea, and the thought saddened him. Without a steady reference in time, he could no longer say how many hours or hepts had passed since her death. The image of her dead, floating corpse bubbled to the top of his recollection.

Anguish wracked him. No! Don’t let that be the memory..! and he suddenly leaned to one side, feeling himself about to vomit, but he could only dry heave. Stomach. Need something in the stomach, he realized. His eyelids scratched over his eyes again. Water. That as why he felt so disoriented, his head aching. He was dehydrated. Can I tell time by that? he wondered.

The viewscreen sat before him, an unused oracle. Finally he focused on it, and scanned the sky. All around there were stars and asteroids, their bright faces staring at him, impassive. So the sun is behind me, he reasoned. Of course, or I’d be cooking to death instead, he realized. Now, what else was I looking for?

He wondered if Lau would be there and he craned his neck around before remembering that her body was still back at the wreckage of the Montfort. He looked for the little research ship and could not find it, but then, he could not remember how long or how far the pod had traveled to get away from the ambush site. And there were some wild turns involved, too, he remembered. Especially in the asteroid field.

Asteroids. That was it, he kept looking at the asteroids. What was odd about them? There seemed to be a path, an unnatural bare patch, slashed through the field of rocks. Some of them were moving, slowly. Something passed through here, clearing the asteroids out. Then it struck him-- the Destroyer.

The same ship that was looking for him was also clearing the asteroids out of their path in order to facilitate their search. But where are they now? Again he looked around, vainly, for the viewport was limited and could only display what the pod faced towards. Turning the pod would mean firing the engines, which would be detected by the Destroyer. What a bind, he thought.

“Blind,” he said aloud, startled at his own voice. “I’m in a bind because I’m blind,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. It hurt to talk. He tried to clear his throat but it was dry. Absently, he put his mouth to the drinking tube of the spacesuit and sucked.

Water suddenly hit him like a flood. It filled his mouth, and he felt a rush, a hammering, pounding sensation. His eyes suddenly became moist, and felt like they were expanding. His whole head, nose, mouth, ears, seemed to fill with fluid.

The water ran down his throat in gulps that he did not want to stop, finally gasping and coughing as his body forced him to take in more cold air. Water droplets went sailing through the pod, and some gathered on his face, he had taken too much into his mouth to swallow and it pooled over his dry, cracked lips. He panted in some more of the frigid air, then drank again. His whole being began to feel more complete, more alive. The pins-and-needles in his arms eased into his hands, and he began to feel his fingers again.

Oh yeah, the straps, he remembered. He brought his hands up to the strap over the right shoulder. The fingers still would not move, so he put both hands to either side of the buckle and pushed inwards, releasing the mechanism. The buckle serenely slid away from Brand, like a dancing snake in zero gravity. He then freed his left shoulder.

Finally, his lap belt came undone and he drank some more water in celebration as the last buckle fell away. He sighed with relief and smiled at his faint reflection in the viewscreen before turning to take stock of what he had available.

The pod was supposed to hold four people and supply them for twenty-four hours. Brand, alone, would be able to survive for four days by himself. There’s a cheerful thought. He wondered what the pod must look like to a passerby, sitting in the bottom of a small crater in an asteroid, hundreds of light-years from any habitable system.

He crawled to the back of the pod and began opening the small storage panels behind the thin seat cushions. Ration bars, blankets, ridiculously thin pillows, and a well-stocked medical kit were all stowed tightly in the compartments.

He pulled out a blanket and wrapped himself in it, then realized what a fool he’d been. You’re wearing a goddamn spacesuit, you idiot. He cursed his stupidity, and weakly lashed out at the bulkhead of the pod. Dusting the frost off of the spacesuit’s wrist control unit, he turned on the suit’s internal heater. Within minutes, he was comfortably warm.

Okay, that will do. It will last as long as the suit battery lasts, then what? It was a good question, he decided, so he thought out an answer. I suppose I could slave some power off of the pod’s battery, he decided. What else do we have here? He pulled out a plastic bag filled with a red liquid. HYDROCARB ENERGY DRINK, the label read. A straw, wrapped in plastic, was attached to it. He pulled off the straw and found a puncture-aperture for it on the side of the bag. Inserting the straw, he put it to his lips and sucked, filling his mouth with a too-sweet syrup.

“Ugh!” he groaned, careful not to spit it out. Don’t want this stuff flying around the cockpit now, do we? he warned himself. Damn, it would have to be an emergency to drink this stuff. His stomach demanded something more substantial, but the syrup encouraged it. He put the bag on a nearby chair and continued to rummage.

The storage area turned up four sets of the same foodstuffs including syrup packs, with only the one medical kit and a small toolbox. A compass and transponder were also included, as well as an information booklet describing how to make a shelter out of the pod’s parachute. A twelve-meter roll of cord would be required-- included in the storage compartment-- and preferably some two-meter long poles, which were not.

Two large, sharp knives were included as well, bringing the total number of weapons Brand had at his disposal up to two.

Brand stuffed it all back inside except for a ration pack, which he tore into greedily. The dry, chalky ration bar filled his stomach without providing him with any taste sensation at all. Well, we wouldn’t want people breaking into the pods for the cuisine. He drank some more of the red syrup. But then, a thenn could get herself drunker than hell on this syrup stuff.

Okay, get a grip, here, he ordered. His rational mind asserted itself more as the basic survival-beast inside became sated. After sleep, water, warmth, food, and syrup the cravings that controlled him were taking a back seat. First things first-- where are we? He looked at the screen.

“We’re in an asteroid field,” he replied aloud without realizing it.
What are we doing here?
“Hiding from the goddamn lizards.”
Why?
“Because they’re trying to kill us.”
Why?
“Who the hell knows? Because they’re lizards, that’s why. Since when do they ever do anything that makes any goddamn sense?”
He paused and chewed another mouthful of ration bar. “Goddamn egg-suckers,” he added for emphasis, saluting with his chewy ration bar.

What would motivate the lizards to kill us? There’s no war.
“There will be,” Brand growled.
The Centrality won’t go to war over a lost research ship.
“I didn’t say the Centrality. Just that there will be a war.”
With who?
“Me and the lizards,” he insisted, staring at the viewscreen without seeing it.
How do you plan to do that?
“I dunno. I have time to plan,” he replied, gesturing around the empty pod. “Me and my proud ship.”

He chewed some more and drank some syrup. Not so bad, he adjudged. “I can finance a guerrilla war,” he reasoned, “become a terrorist. I can still claim a bounty on that habitable world we found,” he remembered now.

The instructors and students of the CCTV Professor Julien Montfort had found a habitable world, a moon that had the right gravity, a stable and breathable atmosphere, and an abundance of surface water. The moon orbited a gas giant at a respectable enough distance that the crust had stabilized long ago and was tectonically stable enough to colonize. The bounty on it, offered by the Bureau of Exploration and Colonization, would be at least two million lesats.

And now you don’t have to share the bounty with anyone. He glared for awhile, staring at the viewscreen. It was true, he didn’t. His share of the bounty had gone up to one hundred percent. But he’d rather have Lau back. Lau and the others...

“Lau,” he said her name, and the stars and asteroids seemed to form into a reverse-color image of her face. “Lau,” he repeated. He could feel his body lose substance. He sighed. “Lau’s share,” he decreed, “I’ll give to her family. Professor Ghoki...” he wondered what to do with Professor Ghoki’s share. He thought of the shattered wreck of the Montfort. “I’ll build a monument on the planet, in the capital city. I’ll have the names inscribed on it, everyone who was killed.”
Fair enough.

“And we’ll call the planet “Montfort”, since the professor guy lost his ship, and it will be poetic justice, because the planet Montfort will carry the names and memories of the ship’s crew that was killed,” he thought about it and decided that yes, it was indeed just. He took another drink from the syrup packet.
And the war?
“Carry on, I guess. I can probably hire some mercenaries, direct them.”
Get revenge.
“Yeah.” He continued to stare out the viewport.

Something was moving. Hastily, he stuffed everything back into the storage compartment, everything but the syrup, which he put on the console beside the pilot’s chair. He sat down in its now-familiar confines. His stomach constricted in fear. Were they coming back? Did the viewscreen alert them? He checked the battery power output, it would be undetectable to the outside. What the hell is it?

He stared for a long time before figuring it out. An asteroid-- no, two-- three... they were all moving. At the same time, and in the same direction, at a uniform speed, which was amazingly slowly. A few were spinning, and a few others were darting off on trajectories of their own, but the majority of them were all...migrating.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked rhetorically. He watched the movement for awhile, trying to figure out what it meant. A lizard trick? he pondered the possibilities. But why would they expect moving asteroids to... Suddenly, he caught it.

“Oh, hell!” he fumed at himself for being so stupid. It wasn’t the asteroids out there that were moving, it was the asteroid he was on, slowly rotating. I’m losing it, he confided to himself, first the spacesuit heater, then the asteroids. He watched the slow movement some more, and this time noticed that the stars were following the pattern as well, but at such a slow relative speed that their motion would not have been detectable by someone not paying attention. So if the asteroid is rotating...

“We got bumped by something.” He leaned forward, gazing intently at the shifting patterns. “Or tapped lightly. A small asteroid, a stray blaster shot...” he gazed at the clock out of habit, peeved that he couldn’t tell anything relevant from it. Four o’clock according to who? He wondered when the asteroid would spin around full circle, and if the Destroyer was still out there-- and when he would look out the viewscreen and see the local sun beating down on his little pod. I’ll be insulated enough to survive, he figured, but it will be damn uncomfortable.

In the meantime, watching the stars and asteroids pan by was somewhat like watching a holoshow, albeit a slow, dull one with no plot. And he could tell himself that he was scanning the heavens for the enemy, when in reality he was just letting himself enjoy the silence, the ease of which his mind slid into the task of gazing at the countless billions of pinpoints of light before him. I am probably seeing a population of several hundred billion people, he realized, and I am the most alone son of a bitch that has ever existed. All around him, space kept its silence, and he kept his.

[Coyote]

“The Ethics of Retribution”
Part II

Lau’s body writhed in the darkness as their bodies swarmed one another, greedily grabbing, holding, touching, exploring... their lips met and locked, released, over and over again, first he was on top, then she, and back.

She looked down at him, her long black hair hanging down from her face like tendrils, encompassing his face like a creature seeking to feed. In the tunnel of her hair, they could see each other, share each other privately through their eyes, to complete the sharing that had taken place earlier.

A moment passed, a moment you don’t realize is there until you are through it... as if by unspoken agreement, she leaned down and gently, gently, placed her lips to his. He relaxed, passive, let her set the pace, the pressure, the agenda... finally he reached up, letting his hands slide along her bare back, not so much pulling her down as simply suggesting her down.

She rests her head on his chest, he enjoys her pressure on top of him, he feels like she is a real presence in his life because of that warm, welcome pressure.
How can he express his feelings? He thinks he knows the way, but he is too scared to tell her. She would laugh if she heard that, and say that he was one that overcame problems, not hesitated before them. But this is the most insurmountable obstacle in his life, to invite such a thing...she knows it already, do I have to say it? Do I have to go the final step and ask her to... he felt so complete with her... he inhales.

He’s going to say it. He was about to ask her. This is it. His lungs constrict, begin forcing the air back out over the vocal chords when she turned her beautiful face to his, curiosity in her eyes, and before he could say anything, she asks--

“--Do you have to go to the bathroom?”

Brand snapped awake, stunned, disoriented. That was not how it had gone. She had asked something else. What was it? When do you have to be back on duty, she had asked. That was it. It had stopped him before he could ask her. Ask her to marry him. He’d been that close.

And then she asked when he had to go back on duty, away from her, and he had to admit that he had to be heading to the bridge within the next few hepts. The moment was gone, and now would be gone forever, hovering, teetering on the edge there in his mind, the unasked and unanswered question. Of course she would have said yes, he figured, but it would have been nice to hear it.

He thought back to the dream. The beautiful dream. A troubling thought furrowed his brow. Why had she asked that? Do I have to-- oh, of course, he realized. I have to go to the bathroom.

Stretching, Brand got up from the pilot’s chair and looked around. The bag of syrup had slid off of the console but hovered in place a few centimeters from it. He grabbed it and felt the welcome, sweet wetness wash down his throat. He put the bag back on the console and centered himself in the back of the pod. Ah, hell, he thought. This is going to be no fun at all.

He unfastened his spacesuit. The cold air outside rushed in, and the smell of his unwashed, sweat-drenched, frozen and then thawed body rushed out.

“Oh, man,” he groaned as he pulled himself out of the suit. The flight suit he’d been wearing underneath was stiff with dried sweat, whitish salt stains gathered on the back and under the armpits. At some point during his ordeal he had urinated as well. “This thing could stand up by itself.” Wear it for much longer and it can probably dance for you, too. He tossed the flight suit into the back of the pod and reached for the small box marked WASTE DISPOSAL. He couldn’t imagine four people in a pod doing this.

Waste disposal consisted of a plastic bag with specially modified openings that Brand was not interested in ruminating on. The bladder was making the most insistent demands so he saw to its needs first. It was a good way to wake up before taking care of the more complex demands that awaited him.

He gazed around the pod, killing time in the game men have faced eternally-- what to do for the next minute or so. And women think this is so great, he smiled. At least they get to make a production out of it. The clock on the wall said that it was twenty after nine.

“What good are you, anyway?” Brand demanded of its silent readout. He turned his gaze to the viewscreen and tried to find out how much the ship had moved since being aware of the situation. Was that big asteroid in the center the last time I saw it? He couldn’t tell. “You all look the same to me,” Brand scolded. “No offense.”

He finished, sealing the bag, and went to put it through the external cycle. Boy, how often are you buck naked in the middle of an asteroid field, holding a bag of your own urine? “Not the way I thought my day would end up,” he admitted to himself before throwing the bag out. Wouldn’t want to get it confused with the syrup. “That wasn’t funny,” he told himself, stifling a snort of amusement. He reached for another bag.

“Now, if you thought that was strange...” he reached behind him, “...wait ‘till you see the encore.” He tried to relax. I haven’t done this since zero-gee training. Not something you really work into your weekend schedule, I guess. Soon that bag followed the other, ejected from the pod.

Brand looked at the flight suit in the corner in disgust. He didn’t want to put it back on, but then he didn’t want to slide back into the spacesuit in the raw, either. And he couldn’t stay in the cold. He looked around for a solution and remembered something with far more supplies than he would ever need. He dug out the medical kit. If I ever need this much medical kit, he told himself, just shoot me instead. Inside was precisely what he suspected to find: a dispenser of moist cloths.

The dispenser, like the rest of the kit, held an overabundance of supplies. If you need an escape pod, Brand figured, you probably have a lot of other problems, too. He pulled out some towelettes and began cleaning himself, his now-damp skin almost freezing in the low temperature of the pod. This is shit. When will we rotate into a nice warm solar wind? Feeling much better, he decided to slip back into the spacesuit anyway, bereft of the flight suit.

He greeted the battery-induced warmth of the spacesuit with joy, and rewarded himself with a long drink of water. He ate part of a ration bar and washed it down with more water, then had some syrup for dessert.

“Boy, this is the life, huh?” he asked the viewscreen. There was no answer. Brand suddenly had a thought and checked the simple communications board. Static hissed on nearly every setting. “Well, no wonder,” he determined, “we’re in the middle of nowhere.” He thought about the area they had been exploring, the newly-opened Raumsfeldt Sector.

It was on the edge of Central Alliance space, bordering the Czhierare Hegemony. “The goddamn lizards,” Brand corrected himself aloud, and would eventually reach the edge of Imperial territory. If they had been expecting any trouble at all, it would have been from wandering Republic trying to find a quiet way into Centrality territory. No one expected the lizards to go off on them.

“Why is that, I suppose?” he asked the air. The asteroids on the screen stared back at him, stupidly, and provided no inspiration at all. Why the lizards? The Irrykanoi Republic was a bunch of shits, to be sure, but they had treaties and protocols for dealing with stuff. The lizards... the lizards are wierd. He tried to remember what he knew about them, which wasn’t much.

They were larger than humans, not taller but with more bulk. They walked on two legs, their bodies hunched forward on massive hind legs, counter-balanced by a large powerful tail. Small but dexterous arms and hands gave them tool-using capability. They had powerful jaws and serrated teeth, but Brand understood that they were evolved from egg-suckers. There was a pervasive rumor in the Centrality-- and, some said, in the Republic-- that they considered the flesh of hominids a delicacy.

But they didn’t try to capture us, Brand reasoned. They immediately came to kill. Destroy, not eat. He couldn’t figure it out. Why did they waste the Montfort, he pondered. Dirk, Professor Ghoki, Engineer Shavi. . . and Lau. His fists balled up in impotent rage, he struck the console and didn’t notice his bleeding knuckles. The thought that Lau had been wasted, her life thrown away. . . for what?

He got up, the faint hiss of static from the comm console filling his mind with a pervasive white noise that he found irritating, but had forgotten to identify. It became something of the environment, something he could not control. Like his frustration, his confusion... The pod seemed both cavernous in its loneliness and confined in its environment; he could not pace but his sense of loss was swallowed whole by the small metal walls that separated him from a cold, oblivious death. He curled up in a fetal position and floated in the pod, trying to take in both the closeness and the emptiness at the same time. God, I need a drink.

*** ***

Brand awoke from a dream that involved him fighting a lizard in deep space, both of them floating in inky nothingness, both of them naked and primeval, tearing at each other with claws, punching, kicking and biting. He awoke thrashing in the confines of the pod, tumbling in the microgravity.

A sudden impact on his head startled him, and he lashed out, punching the back of the pilot’s chair, pain shooting through his hand and arms. This only made him more angry, and he kicked at another chair, then the bulkhead, launching himself towards the rear of the little pod. His back slammed against the rear of the pod and he spun, attacking the bulkhead like a new enemy. He then kicked away from it, tackling the pilot’s chair and grappling with it, hammering away with frustrated rage.

“Fucking lizards!” he screamed at the top of his voice, his ears ringing with the sound. He felt relief in the powerful projection of his voice and did it again. “Goddamn fucking cold-blooded bastards!” he screamed, punching at the chair again and again as he cursed and screamed at anything he could think of. The image of Lau’s body floated across his vision again and he screamed again, in rage and pain. He cursed the lizards again, this time for their inefficiency.

“Why didn’t you kill me! Why! Why? You killed everybody but me!” Why am I here when she isn’t? he demanded. “Why couldn’t you send me to join her!” he accused, his voice wavering, his throat beginning to become scratchy and raw. It would have been so easy, he thought, I sat there for how long? Five hepts? Staring? He couldn’t believe the lizard’s lack of action, or gunnery, or whatever had allowed him to live.

“Why didn’t you put on your goddamn spacesuit?” his voice asked, cracking. He looked at Lau’s body in his mind, drifting away, and his thought had been, why didn’t you put on your spacesuit? The alarm went off, we all had time. . . I certainly did, anyway, he knew. “You stupid dumb bitch!” he screamed, “if you’re that goddamn stupid, then I didn’t wanna marry you anyway!” he raged.

“Why? Why? Why?” he screamed hysterically, alternately cursing and pleading with her. “To hell with you!” he insisted, “you’re too damn stupid to put on your spacesuit-- then you deserve it! You deserve to be dead!” he yelled hoarsely, his voice beginning to fade into breathy, harsh whispers. “I deserve it!” he continued without breaking his stride. “I deserved it, I deserve you, where did you go..?” he broke down in sobs, his eyes straining to produce the tears that flecked away from his face and flew into the confines of the pod, as Lau’s body had done.

“Why didn’t you put on your spacesuit,” he whispered meekly, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. . . I loved you,” he whispered, and collapsed again into darkness.

*** ***

Brand awoke and washed himself with more of the moist towels from the dispenser, and treated himself with some more ration bars. His stomach, which had been rumbling with hunger, decided to switch into a sort of passive indifference at the meager offerings. The syrup, however, was a welcome diversion.

“Okay, so what do we have here today,” Brand muttered. Outside, the slow migration of rocks continued, most of them just overly-conspicuous flecks of light. “Well, at least I have changing scenery,” he reasoned, “You know, some people pay millions of lesats to find some lonely home, far away, and set up a quiet little frontier of their own. Ah, the serenity, the solitude. . .” He took his position at the pilot’s console, still absently sucking at the bag of syrup.

The seat leaned back, he discovered, and he propped his spacesuited feet up on the console. Now for a good cigarro, he mused. He sat for hours, patiently letting his eyes slide from one asteroid to another, randomly creating patterns from one to another, homespun constellations that made sense only to him. “My empire,” he announced solemnly.

“Okay,” he announced, unaware he was speaking aloud, “my options. I can set a course for somewhere, and try to make it before I die.” He raised an eyebrow in what he felt would surely be seen as a contemplative gesture, had he been blessed with an audience. “Or,” he said again, “I fly back to where we saw the inhabitable planet, and I survive there. Survive, until. . .” he trailed off, scanning he sky some more, “. . .until what?” He sat up, keeping a grip on the arms of the pilot’s chair while he did so.

“Of course, I can stay here, safe and sound, and enjoy my final days as best I can,” he smirked, then chuckled, and started laughing out loud. His laughter turned hysterical, and some small part of his mind could hear himself, and was alarmed. He dismissed it with a wave, and enjoyed his new-found feeling of hilarity at his situation. “Got me syrup and a view! Let’s have us a party!” he whooped. And best of all, I won’t have to pay back my student loans, he realized suddenly, and that sent him laughing some more.

“This isn’t so bad after all!” he yelled, “I have loved and lost, lived and traveled, and the folks back home would have never believed the life I led. Damn,” he suddenly sobered, “I should write a book and leave it behind, for whoever discovers my body.” The thought had a strange appeal. Man, something like this pod could be hidden here for centuries, he realized, when they discover it, I’ll be all over the news. “Famous from beyond the grave!” he declared defiantly. “Like all true artists,” Brand smiled, “I’ll be famous and rich only after death.”

Brand lapsed into silence, his mind trying to find something it had misplaced. He briefly thought back to his childhood pet, a rajel pup that his older brother had mischievously named Humper. Someone had once told him that a rajel lived its whole life like someone who wandered into a room, trying to find something but unable to remember what it was. Brand felt that way now-- like I misplaced something, he confirmed to himself, I don’t feel like a rajel, and especially not like Humper. Brand chuckled at the memory.

Humper had been a hyperactive, skinny little furball, and as the name implied, had tried to mount everything he could get his forelegs around. Like the time sis sat down at the dinner table with her idiot boyfriend,

Brand recalled, grinning, and Aldan grabbed Humper by the collar and dragged him over to where she was sitting. “Humper, look!” he’d said, pointing to her legs, “twins!” and then that little bastard would start going at it, Shanna screaming for mom, kicking furiously. . . Brand started laughing again. Humper had affixed himself to his sister’s leg, and was clinging for dear life while she kicked and thrashed, his little eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets.

He and Aldan had laughed like crazy then, and the memory nearly brought him to tears when he recalled how Aldan had had the bloodshot eyes characteristic of the cloud he’d been taking. Brand hadn’t understood it then, but his brother was already lost into the world of cloud, and later he hadn’t been able to recall the incident, or why Shanna had been so angry at him.

“Shit,” Brand said, suddenly slipping into melancholy. The last time he’d seen his brother. . . a shambling mound of unwashed clothes and filthy hair had shuffled towards him, hesitant, from the street behind the mall. Threatening yet familiar, sad and desperate, his own brother looked at him without recognition, only some vague flicker somewhere in his bloodshot, vacant eyes. “Spare some skins?” he’d asked, “I wanna clean up.”

“I walked away,” Brand recalled aloud. He’d never told his parents, who thought that Aldan was away at some technical school. Brand was sure that they had figured it out, but refused to admit it, and he remembered the silence that reigned in the house those last years before he left.

Aldan came home once, while Brand was away at University, or at least Shanna had written to tell him. He came home for a week, and kept to his room most of the time. He said he wanted to clean up, his pale, gaunt face a mocking parody of the laughing practical joker he’d once been. His eyes were wide and unfocused, he remembered from the letter, like he was trying to see everything at once. He left as mysteriously as he’d returned, disappearing into a winter night with a thin shirt and pants, and a pair of sandals.

Two years ago, Brand reasoned. His parents never mentioned the visit in their letters, and he never pushed them for it. Not long after that, Shanna left, the only word from her since were the occasional holiday cards around Communion and New Year’s.

“And so, here I end my glory days,” Brand sighed, looking around his tiny lifepod. He thought about his brother, his sister and parents, and Lau. He thought long and hard about Lau. What was this all for? he asked. Why?
“I hate you, God,” he said, and sobbed quietly.

*** ***

Arawn Brand did not wake up, rather, he simply became gradually conscious. He was drained, his energy sapped, his will quieted. He sat and stared, not feeling his eyelids as they pulled themselves over his dry, scratchy eyes, again and again. Uncounted hepts slipped into wandering hours, aimless and timeless, an eternity behind and an eternity ahead, and all of it disjointed, unaccountable, linked only tenuously through time.

It was a time he no longer felt, an experience barely acknowledged. How will it end? he wondered, when? Why? Will it matter, will I notice? His body sat, rigid, and part of him realized that he was conserving a lot of power and food by sitting there, doing nothing, willing himself to die.

[Coyote]

More to come, chapter III is about 1/2 finished as of this post...

[Coyote]

The Ethics of Retribution-- Part III

The asteroids continued to move, as they had been for. . . what, three days now? Four and a half? How much oxygen do I have left? He glanced at the life support readout. The glowing indicator was well into the yellow. Only red, then crimson, left to go before. . . He shook his head, his stiff neck muscles making him pay for his insolence. The air in the pod was stale and rank, but he did not feel it, and his world had been sufficiently compressed into the thin metal canister of the lifepod that he could now scarcely imagine another life.

His discarded flight suit continued to float in the back of the lifepod, which Brand now treated as an extra cabin. The three meter length to the tail end of the pod was now a major journey, like exploring a new sector, and it was something that Brand did only rarely. He spent his time in the pilot’s seat-- his command console-- and watched the stars, the asteroids, the billions of glimmering lights and souls and myriad other miracles that he was excluded from.

He sighed, and took a long drag from the syrup bag.

“Gotta go easy on the stuff,” he reminded himself, pleased to hear his own voice and feel like he had company, “only another bag left.” Grimacing, he realized that he had easily another two days’ worth of syrup, and maybe a day and a half of oxygen. He fumbled his way out of the pilot’s seat and glided towards the back of the pod, feeling oddly serene and at one with the universe. He dug out more ration bars and stuffed them in the pockets of the spacesuit.

Digging through the medical kit, he found a supply of pills and injectors. Whoah, hel-lo there. . . he pulled them out and examined them. Well, well. . . this must have slipped my mind. Here’s an option. The injectors carried a reactant to radiation in case of a reactor leak, and Brand knew that the stuff was could be lethal in large doses. He filed that away for future contemplation, stuffing the injectors in another pocket of the spacesuit.

The pills were a different story, mostly headache and nausea pills, some small capsules for sleeping, some for waking up, still others for poison treatment. A nice cocktail can be good for what ails me, if I need to, he decided, and threw them into the small storage bin by the pilot’s chair. The rope-- strangulation.

“Alas, no gravity,” he reminded himself with a whisper. The knives could be useful as well, or. . . he glanced at the back of the pod, towards the hatch. Now why didn’t I think of that sooner? he wondered, pondering the benefits of vacuum. Brand returned to his seat, giggling at the thought of trying to mummify himself with the bandage rolls before slipping away into a drug-assisted final rest.

He sat and stared some more, sipping at his syrup and playing connect-the-dots with the asteroids some more, easily slipping his mind into a mental neutral and enjoying the ride. It was more difficult this time because one of the asteroids would not cooperate, sometimes hiding and sometimes not.

Another asteroid was coming into view from the port side, and he concentrated on it-- big, scarred and pitted, with a huge fissure running through the middle, almost like two large asteroids that had just enough gravity left to come together without actually colliding. Brand chuckled. Looks like a huge ass, he decided, and hoisted a drink in its honor.

Thunk.

Brand blinked, syrup still filling his mouth, as he contemplated what he had heard, or possibly heard, and ran through his mind a little checklist of all the possible ‘thunking’ objects within the pod. He twisted in his seat, looking for the medical kit-- did I leave it out? he wondered, And if I did, was it going somewhere fast enough to make a thunk? But the medical case was secured in its compartment, only a couple of pillows and Brand’s sweat- and-urine stained flightsuit had been left free-floating in the back. Definitely not thunking material, he decided, glancing around some more. Suddenly, he realized what was happening.

“I’m hallucinating!” he called out, almost as if announcing a victory. He glanced at the oxygen-- still in the lower part of the yellow and dropping. “I suppose it is reasonable by now to assume, uh, oxygen deprivation and all that. . .” he looked for the telltale black spot effects of hypoxia, but failed to notice any.

“Ahh, clever-- a very clever part of the hallucination,” he decided, taking another long drag at the syrup. Well, if this is the beginning of the end, then I better decide how I want to do it. Oxydep? Pharmaceutical dreamland? Vaccing? He glanced back at the hatch at the rear of the pod and noticed that his flight suit and pillows had all been pulled up to the bulkhead just forward of the hatch. Odd, he figured. Has the asteroid shifted?

He remembered that hours, days, before --whatever-- something had set the asteroid in motion. But everything not secured would have floated in place, while the pod shifted with the rock. And I haven’t moved. Brand’s mind began to come to life again, curiosity at his life’s last mystery giving him something to live for.

Slowly, lazily, Brand brought himself out of the pilot’s chair and floated to the back of the pod, securing himself with one hand while pulling at the flight suit with another. The suit came away from the bulkhead, but reluctantly gave up its hold as if clinging to a lover. The two pillows, previously spurned, now vied for attention at the now-vacant spot. Brand pulled them away as well, tossing them impatiently towards the front of the pod and brought himself closer to the bulkhead.

His mind was already beginning to work when he heard the faint hiss of escaping air. What the hell happened? More curious than panicked, he turned to inspect every part of the pod before looking back at the viewscreen, where a head-sized chunk of rock-- icy cold at one end, molten red at the other-- sailed past his view.

He dove for the control console, hitting the power key before realizing what a bad idea it was. Instantly, the cockpit of the little pod blazed to life, and the simple sensors began scanning, actively, loudly, for any evidence of rescue. A ping sounded from the console, and Brand brushed away the thin coating of frost that had accumulated. There the words sat, red, glowing, inviting: PROXIMITY ALERT, the readout said, then, CONFIRMED HOSTILE.

“Now you tell me!” Brand growled, and jumped into the pilot’s chair, somehow remembering to strap himself in. The pod’s sensors flickered, and the outline of a Czhierare Destroyer manifested itself onto the screen. “Sweet Thyssa! Goddamn!” Brand hollered, panic seizing him.

“Four days! Four days, you evil bastards! Can’t you get enough!?” He maxed the pod’s engines, screaming out of the confines of his little crater home. What’s going on with these guys? “Goddamn lizards! I’ll roast you in hell and eat you myself, I swear it before God!” Behind him, the bulk of the Destroyer leaped out at him, the distance between them falling away.

Brand flew like a madman, his face split into a ghoulish grin. He cackled insanely, leading his pursuers towards the larger asteroid he had seen just a few hepts earlier. The screens on the pod crackled, as energy fire hissed through space around them. Something slammed into the pod like the hammer of God, sending the small metal tube spinning wildly. Brand fought for control, ignoring the sirens going off and the sparking and popping of the control panels.

He glanced at his oxygen readout, it was dark like most of his other controls. The air became thin and cold, and then non-existent, all in the space of a second. From the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of motion as one of the pillows went sailing to the rear of the pod. Brand’s vision began to grow fuzzy and black, and he quit fighting the pod long enough to grab his space helmet from its mounting. He slapped it on and secured it before checking to see if the seals were intact, trusting instinct as he reached into the side pocket for his gloves.

Soon, suited and hyperventilating his way through the last 20 hepts of his suit’s oxygen supply, Brand piloted his slowly disintegrating pod through the rock storm that was developing. The Destroyer’s weapons were sending pieces of asteroids flying in every direction. The heavy ship slowed to wade its way through its own carnage, its deflectors glowing from multiple kinetic impacts.

Brand’s pod approached the fractured dark mass, which the navicomputer identified as being far larger and far denser than most of he surrounding debris. Probably the former core of the planet, Brand guessed absently. He steered towards it, slowing to pick through the choking cluster of tiny rocks escorting it.

The Destroyer was not far behind him, firing its way through the now dangerously-moving field of asteroids around it. Idiots, Brand cursed mentally, asteroids aren’t dangerous as long as you leave them alone. Brand figured out his course of action. By now there isn’t enough left of the computer to stop me from ramming, he decided. I’ll swing around this big ugly chunk here and come back at the lizards like a cannon ball.

Brand set his jaw and prepared his death. So this is it, he decided, this is how I go. There are far worse ways, I suppose, and at least this has the ring of a true adventure. He sailed past the bulk of the asteroid, pushing out almost the last drops of fuel to get a good velocity going. He was pleasantly surprised by the gravity from the asteroid, which provided him with a boost for a good slingshot effect.

It was a slingshot never to be completed. As the little pod reached the dark side of the asteroid and Brand readied his final charge, he was suddenly thrown into a violent stall, his body straining at the crash straps holding him to his seat. The engines flared and died, and the little pod was rapidly decelerated, plummeting towards the rock below.

“Goddamnit to hell!” Brand shrieked, his throat going raw. He spilled out an endless stream of curses and invectives, banging his fists on the console before him. The computer readout calmly informed him what the problem was: TRACTOR BEAM LOCKED ON. “Nononono --NOooo!!” he insisted, grabbing his knives from his spacesuit pocket. A thousand thoughts raced through his mind, popping his helmet, slashing his throat, or bursting onto the enemy ship like an enraged demon so they’d have no choice but to cut him down with a hail of fire.

A trap, he decided, it was a trap. They herded me here, and they established an outpost here to trap me. . . The pod plummeted towards the surface, aimed straight into the fissure of the giant asteroid to be swallowed by the darkness, as surely as if swallowed by a great living monster.

“A trap, a goddamn trap, and I fell for it,” he muttered to himself as the pod was pulled, sensors blind, into the fissure. Brand sat back in his chair, his mind racing. “They won’t get me without a fight.” He put on his suit and helmet and grabbed the two survival knives from his pack. He looked at the other supplies he had—there were probably a large variety of weapons he could fashion, but he didn’t have the time to figure anything out.

He strapped himself into the back bench, near the hatch, trusting the tractor beam to pull him in. After all, if they’d wanted me dead, they’d have done it by now, right? The tiny pod was engulfed in darkness; the ambient light of reflected suns now out of reach. Whatever was directing the tractor beam was also sending out an electronic warfare program, and the pod’s simple computer was quickly breached. The internal lights went out, trapping Brand in an eternal darkness.

As the pod began to cool rapidly, his breath came out in thickening vapors and the nervous sweat on his face became intolerably cold. He regretted not having put on his flight suit; he would have to face the lizards with only the spacesuit between them and his body.

The pod seemed to slow although Brand could not be sure. It was definitely decelerating, and he suddenly felt a slight peak of gravity—like being at the end of a gentle elevator ride. It was several hepts before Brand realized that his journey was over.

“Well, what the hell are they waiting for?” he breathed, his own whisper scaring him in the pitch black. He began to realize just how quiet and alone he’d been for many days. He twitched the knives in his hands, and absently brushed one hand against the pocket of the spacesuit where he kept the hypodermic needles full of their cocktail of oblivion.

“Fuck it,” he muttered, and went to open the hatch.
The manual locking wheel turned, the electronics having been thoroughly scrambled by whatever breaching program had been unleashed on his helpless pod. The hatch swung out without a sound, and Brand waited for a helmeted lizard to poke through the opening. First one gets a smashed faceplate, he assured himself, readying for a pommel strike from one of his knives, but no helmet or head appeared.

“I don’t have time for this shit!” Brand screamed, and looked at his oxygen indicator. With five hepts to go, he really didn’t have much time at all. For anything, he thought, his mind feeling like a distant thing from his body as the realization hit him. Five hepts, just five hepts, his mind screamed. How many times can a man truly look at a unit of measurement and say that he knows the time and nature of his death? With nothing to lose, Brand steeled himself and leapt through the open hatch of the pod, his two little knives out in what he hoped would be good defensive positions.

No beams flicked out to lick him; no bullets reached out to bite him. He sailed through the blackness towards he knew not what. The gravity of the asteroid was practically nonexistent and he began to realize that the cavern he was in would have a wall of some sort. He spun around—a perfect zero-gee maneuver—and prepared to absorb the impact with his legs. He reached the rocky wall just a few segs later, and looked around, shocked at his continued survival.

What he saw, or rather what he didn’t see, did nothing to assure him. While it was obvious that there were no Czhierare troops waiting to stamp out his existence, there was also nothing else to orient off of. The cavern was pitch black, and he could now not even locate his pod.

“Good job, asshole,” he muttered, and noted that he had only three hepts of oxygen left. “Hello!” he called out, transmitting on the suits emergency comm. He briefly switched on the emergency beacon, hoping that at least the Czhierare would grab him and give him some ability to determine his own fate. The answer he got terrified him as much as he was reassured that he was not left to die alone.

A bright light stabbed out into the darkness from a part of the chamber that was, from Brand’s perspective, the right wall. The lance swept out from its unidentifiable source and illuminated his abandoned pod, looking forlorn and empty in the middle of the cavern. Brand panicked as the light swept towards him, cruel in its deliberate slowness, until he was finally trapped fully in its glare.

He gently let go of the wall he’d clung to and let himself float out into full view, putting his arms spread-eagle and waiting for the energy beams that would end his life. Oh, God, why did it have to be out here, like this? He wondered. His mind seemed to throb, and his thinking was clouded. Something gently grabbed him, pulling him towards the light, and he let himself go, barely noticing the coldness and tingling in his extremities or the blackening spots of vision as the hypoxia closed in on him.

*** ***

Arawn Brand floated in a white light, ghostly white, and enjoyed the feeling of freedom. There was no gravity, his soul felt free, and there was nothing holding him down. The light surrounded him, buoyed him, cut the bonds of his captivity and allowed him to slip higher… higher… and he rejoiced in every sweet breath, every lungful of sweet, delicious oxygen; the euphoria of deliverance swelling his chest to such a degree that he did not notice the tears streaming from his eyes or the droplets flicking from his lashes and trailing away into the great light that guided him.

To wakefulness.

*** ***

Gravity tugged at him. It was light, and it felt oddly disorienting. Brand no longer had the freedom of choosing his own up, down, or sideways; he was now bound by law. He embraced at as he despised it at the same time. The gentle waves of gravity reassured him that he was not under the effects of a full gee of effort, but about half a gee, which made it easier for him to pick himself off from the floor.

Floor.

The floor was a series of grated deck panels, bolted down as one would find on a spacecraft. Brand’s mind cleared suddenly, and he spun to all fours. The bulky spacesuit limited his movement, and he noticed that he still had the helmet on, but the visor was unlatched. He panicked for a moment, wondering if he was dying, then realized that he wasn’t.

Grabbing his helmet, he tugged at the latches, throwing it off and breathing deeply, enjoying every gasp and laughing at the tingling coolness that danced across his sweat-and-tear streaked face. His laughter turned to a gasping sob as he collapsed on the deck, just breathing and breathing and breathing, thankful for so much air. His suit readout indicated that he, or at least his suit, had been without oxygen for over two hours. So for two hours he’d been—

--Here.

Brand’s mind cleared itself from its rapture and he sat up on his knees, looking around him and really taking in his surroundings for the first time. Here was a large room, laid out like a cargo hold on a small medium-sized spacecraft. A steep ladder led up to an obvious airlock before him; to either side were two human-sized airlocks along bulkheads that were otherwise fairly smooth. Rows of rugged, collapsible bench seats were also folded against the bulkheads down either side.

Behind him was a small octagon-shaped crawlspace entrance lined with black-and-yellow striped markers. Signs in an alien tongue gave warnings Brand couldn’t comprehend. The deck itself was dotted with cargo tie-downs and gravity plates, clamps, and other fastenings for a variety of cargo. The floor in front of him was articulated, as if the entire front of the bay could open up and form a ramp. Overhead was a powerful-looking hoist mounted on rails that could pick up and move things to anywhere in the bay. The empty bay.

Empty, of course, with the exception of Arawn Brand.

“Alright,” he said aloud, wondering who was monitoring him in this sudden prison, “Let’s have a look around, shall we?” Brand staggered to his feet and noticed his two knives, lying on the deck about where his hands must have been when he came to. He regarded them with curiosity. His eyes wandered from the knives to his hands, to the helmet on the floor near him. The visor—popped open, as if on command. Whose command? Brand tried to collect his thoughts.

“Okay,” he said, his voice rational and expected, “I was floating towards the light,” he muttered. His gauntleted hands rubbed together as he tried to reconstruct his last memories. “A light, and then…” he woke up here. A spaceship, that was obvious, and with human-sized airlocks. And ladders. And bench seats. Not the dreary, musky, humid confines of a Czhierare Destroyer. He thought about that a moment as he reached down to scoop up his two knives and remembered to pat the pocket where his hypodermics were. They were still there. He wandered the confines of the room and muttered to himself.

“Unless it is a section of the lizard ship modified for human prisoners?” he wondered. No, that wouldn’t do, he decided. A prison would not be modified for comfort, it would be cramped and uncomfortable; a prison would certainly not have multiple entrances and a cargo hoist. He most definitely would not have his knives.

Brand examined the airlock to his left and found it secured, with a red indicator glowing bright and a green one left dull and unlit. The alien writing teased him from its place on the bulkhead and by the airlock. Brand had never seen anything remotely like it but noted that it was placed at a level that would be comfortable for humans to read.

“So you’re not thenn,” Brand mumbled, “nor Q’aab, nor wanni. Actually, you could only belong to either humans or zhulescu,” he judged. Most of the bipedal species of the Central Alliance were bigger or smaller than either humans or zhulescu, two of the most prolific shipbuilders in the known galaxy. Brand tried to remember what little he knew of the various human or zhulescu languages and came up with no matches for the words he saw. Of course, I’m a language idiot, he mused, staring at the alien squiggles for a long time before giving up.

The other lock was in the same condition so he ventured up the ladder to the other lock, which, he figured, must go to the flight deck. It was secured shut, and the alphanumeric touchpad next to it would not respond to him. He was not surprised. He was equally unsurprised to find the access hatch to the rear to be sealed as well.

Brand paced the length of the deck, too tired for anger or any displays. He muttered some more and lowered the portside bench seats, stretched out on them and slipped into an exhausted sleep.

*** ***

Brand awoke, sore from sleeping in the spacesuit. The stiff joints of the suit made flattening out impossible, and as Brand sat up on the stretched canvas that formed the sole padding of the bench seat, he realized another reason for his overall ache. The gravity had increased. Not just increased, but become something close to human normal-- although he could tell that he still had a ways to go before he was quite at one full gee.

“Who’s running this show, anyway?” he demanded. He couldn’t decide if they were doing the right thing or not. He’d not felt one full gee for days and he’d had no opportunity for exercise in the cramped pod. Still, they could have done it while I was awake, he complained in silence.

Another thing was pressing at Brand, the need for food. He looked at his suit’s readout, which informed him that he’d been out of oxygen for over twelve hours. Twelve hours! Brand’s mind reeled; I’ve been in this tub for twelve hours, most of it asleep! Hunger and a toilet competed for dominance in Brand’s mind. He had no toilet bags in the suit, and he wasn’t quite desperate enough to pick a corner just yet. He examined his room, and slowly came to the realization that something was different.

There was something else in the room. Not a thing, but a… pattern. He realized what it was as he was looking at it. A rectangle of light stretched out across the deck that had not been there before.

Brand traced the rectangle back up to its origins, knowing what he would find and both eager and anxious for the truth. His heart raced as his eyes focused on the glowing indicator panel and open frame of the airlock at the top of the stairs.

The hatch, once closed at sealed as if dead, was now gaping open, illuminated down the hall with bright lights. Brand froze for a few segments, and slowly drew one of his survival knives as he rose to his feet. There wasn’t a sound but his own breathing, and while he concentrated as hard as he could, he still couldn’t pick up a noise of any sort from beyond the open hatch.

“Hello!” Brand announced, in what he hoped was a bold yet not too hostile voice. It came out somewhat shaky, but he didn’t notice. The noise itself was so sudden in its intensity that he was momentarily startled by its slight echo. “Hey, I’m, ah, I’m coming up, okay?” he asked, walking at a labored pace towards the stairs. He reached the handrail and gripped it, ready for anything to come leaping out. Nothing did, even as his booted foot reached the first landing.

Brand stepped with as much stealth as he thought he could muster, unaware of how his labored breathing announced his presence, his face bathed in sweat and eyes wide with panic.

The ladder was only a few steps high, and Brand was able to bring his eyes up to the level of the deck and peer ahead of him after just a couple of steps. He saw a simple corridor, functional and utilitarian, with a human-sized double door at the far end with more alien writing and dead consoles next to them. Eight more doors—four on each side—lined the corridor. No light escaped from their seams, which seemed airtight.

“Hello?” brand called again, and again receiving no answer. He climbed the rest of the way to the deck and stood in the doorway, about to enter the corridor when he stopped and looked back at the helmet on the floor behind him. And what good would it do, he reasoned, with no oxygen left? They could have killed me many times already. The thought comforted him somewhat, still, he kept the knife in his hand as he advanced into the corridor, waiting for the doors to slam shut behind him.

They did, and Brand, while expecting it in his mind, could not control his hyperemotional reactions. He jumped forward and spun, facing the doors with his knife, fear gripping him. He’d begun to reason that he was on a ghost ship, the crew dead, the vessel functioning on automatic, rather than an elaborate trap. And while never a believer in ghosts, he had to admit a certain fright of the mysterious that was probably a leftover reaction from childhood.

He remembered being frightened of the stumbling, shuffling ragged creature that had been his brother, approaching him like a zombie that one night… a similar shambling, ragged figure here, on this ship, would probably have sent him into a mind-numbing horror.

But no figures appeared; no ghosts or zombies come to avenge the vessel’s dead crew. Whoever they were, they’re dead now, Brand rationalized. No ship could be parked here, left like this, and just forgotten. Legends and stories warred in his mind, tales of ghost ships adrift in the darkness, missing crews and vacuum in the corridors, with only silent debris floating through the hulks leaving tantalizing questions about the crews’ last actions.

Ghost ship stories were popular fare in childhood, then cast aside as immature as one grew older. Then, they returned with a particularly chilling vengeance when a person studied to be a pilot or crewer and heard some of the real stories that got repeated with appropriate grave severity by instructors and other old spacehands. Abandoned ships, perfectly operable, yet abandoned—it happened, it was real, and while chances were that it wouldn’t happen to you…

And now, here was Arawn Brand, delivered from a normal life of study and astogation, a life of love and its expectations, thrown into a hellish maze of death and destruction at alien hands, pursuit, hiding, survival, and now… to end up on a legend from time, stalking the corridors of an abandoned hulk, knife in hand. He approached the closed door, shuffling one foot behind the other in a fighting stance he’d seen others take.

The doors slid open again as he got close to them, and he could see that the cargo hold he’d begun his imprisonment in was still there. In fact, his helmet still rested on the deck where he’d flung it, looking up at him with its own stoic kind of mockery. He smiled at it, and retreated back into the corridor, this time welcoming the predictable closing of the doors behind him. He was on a ship, he could feel it now, and a ship was something he knew.

This time, when Brand stepped forward, his caution was braced by a bit more confidence. He expected, now, for one of the other doors to open as he approached, and he was not disappointed. Still holding his knife at waist-level, he peered into the open hatch of the number one door to his left, ready to accept anything he saw, even if it was the mummified remains of the crew hunched over some yet-unrepaired component vital for the functions of the ship.

What he saw was nothing more threatening than a wardroom, albeit a cramped one. A small semicircular table faced out towards a very basic, no-frills ship’s galley. A cushioned—and amazingly, not too badly worn—bench seat curled around the circular portion of the table. Seeing the galley made Brand’s stomach complain. He thought of the chalky ration bars and sweet syrup of the pod, now lost in the darkness outside. He stepped in, hesitant, and figured that a look in the pantry couldn’t hurt.

Secured behind the galley doors was a collection of classical military-style heat-and-eats, covered with more of the same bizarre alien writing. He looked at the tough outer plastic bag of one and couldn’t discern a date, so he tore at a seam with his knife. He spilled the contents out on the table and examined them. No holes, and no puffing that would indicate some sort of rampant fungus at work inside. His stomach warred with his common sense and he opened up one of the smaller packets. Would it be possible that the rations, however long they’d been there, would still be edible?

From the package slid a compacted slab of concentrated stew, which would become quite liquid once heated. He stuffed the contents back in the minipacket they’d come in and threw it in the heater, randomly punching buttons until he got the cook cycle started. He waited, salivating, as the heater did its job and Brand shuffled nervously from foot to foot, casting guilty looks out the hatchway, waiting for an irate crewer to storm in and demand an explanation.

No crewer came, and Brand had to open the heater door to stop the cook cycle after the usual two hepts had gone by. The packet opened, releasing a delicious steam that demolished the last of Brand’s reserve. He shoved his nose and mouth into the packet, attacking it like an animal, enjoying the hot wetness on his nose and coating his mouth.

No other meal in his life had yet tasted so sweet to Arawn Brand.

*** ***

(To be Continued)

[Ryoga]

Looks good so far. You've got me genuinely interested in where you're going with it, which is always a good thing. Keep 'em comin'.

[Evil Sadistic Bastard]

Long.
Block.
Of.
Text.
Eyes.
Hurt.

[ArmorPierce]

hmmm.... well it's long

[Coyote]

Hey, if you have a critique, by all means say something-- it can only help me get better at this, which is one of the reasons I'm trying this out. Character, plot, action, pace, 'realism' or believability... on this or any other of my posts.

I'll bring in more as soon as I can, and hope to offer any insight I can on others' stuff too...

[HemlockGrey]

I cannot possibly read that. All the text runs together.

Split it into paragaphs. Use lots of spacing.

[Eleas]

I cannot possibly read that. All the text runs together.

Split it into paragaphs. Use lots of spacing.

Indeed, spacing good. I like Coyote's stories, but not enough to risk breaking my eyes on 'em.

[Coyote]

Empires: The Ethics of Retribution-- Part IV


The remains of two food packets sat, ravaged, on the small desk that served as the galley’s primary furniture. Brand sat back and looked at the remains, satisfied and in better spirits than he’d been in for a long time. Small, unnoticed chunks of pear remained in his considerable beard stubble.

He’d removed his spacesuit gauntlets and placed them on the table as well, ignoring the small voice in the back of his mind that told him that he should keep his spacesuit parts collected together in one easily-grabbed spot.

Other needs pressed him now, and he stood to find a latrine. Exiting the galley he saw that nothing had changed in the corridor, and a quick check to the door to his right assured him that the cargo room he’d woken up in was also still there. He had space he didn’t know what to do with.

The doors across the galley wouldn’t open, and the next door up opened up into a crowded crew cabin. The crowded bunks, three high, were perfectly made and had crash webbing secured above them. Interesting, Brand realized, this ship was made before individual crew capsules were the norm. Like the Julien Montfort. That would place this ship at about…

“Djeriessi Hegemony,” he whispered, almost reverent, and punctuated his comment with a low whistle. Has this ship been sitting here for over 300 years? He stopped and stared at the empty, wrinkle-free bunks and fought down a sensation of vertigo.

Without thinking, he grabbed at one of the door catches for a nearby crew locker. He fumbled it open and stared inside: neatly-folded underwear for an average-sized male, a few nondescript dark grey—almost black—flight suits, a pair of military-style boots, a handful of personal odds and ends.

And everywhere, snippets of that odd writing in both blocky print and handwritten cursive styles.

“Holy sweet dancing Thyssa,” Brand muttered, examining the other two lockers. They were near-copies of the first. He closed the lockers and rushed to the other room across from the one he was in; in it were an identical set of lockers and personal gear, except that this room seemed to be one shared by a trio of females.

The next two rooms were the same—three-man crew quarters, and judging by the clothes and effects, only one cabin was used by women.

The last cabin on the left was the same size but with only one bunk. The Captain’s suite? he guessed. The room also had a single, larger locker with a number of more worn flight suits, and more broken-in boots. The Captain clearly had more of a personal effects allowance, and had a variety of civilian clothes stowed as well.

A single, simple picture was printed out and taped inside the locker door—a handsome brown-skinned woman in her forties, human, with intelligent eyes and a face that naturally pulled itself into smiles. Two teenaged children sat with her, a boy and a girl, wearing styles that Brand couldn’t identify. The civilian clothes in the Captain’s cabin were completely unknown to him as well.

Brand’s mind swam with what he’d learned, but now his body was demanding attention. He went to the only door left and was grateful to see that it was indeed the ship’s lavatory.

He sat for a long time, studying the room that would have been small by groundling standards but was a well-equipped palace for spacers. Two small stalls saw to the needs of the crew, two sinks and a two-person shower stall were all lumped together in close quarters.

Judging by what he’d seen so far, Brand figured that these thirteen people would be the entire compliment of the vessel that had been parked here—again, the impossible thoughts pushed their way to the top of his mind.

Three hundred and fifty years ago. he marveled. He sat on the latrine, trying to take it all in, until his legs went numb. Then he cleaned up and went through the rooms again, slowly, looking at the bunks and realizing them for the remnants of human habitation that they represented. For three hundred years no one has laid down on these bunks, he guessed.

He wandered the length of the corridor, the cargo bay, and sat again at the galley. He threw the remains of the food packets into what looked like the recycler—it had the same yellow warning border around it, anyway—and took a deep breath.

“Okay, so what the fuck is going on?” he wondered aloud, trying to organize his thoughts. He slid his spacesuit gauntlets back and forth on the table. He was uncomfortable about something and was just beginning to put it together.

His rational mind wrestled with the eerie images of the long-empty bunks and neglected personal effects. Legends of ghost ships teased him; his own fears tickled the edges of his senses.

Not all his fears were unreasonable, he figured. Who in the hell turned on that spotlight? he wondered. For that matter, who ran that tractor beam? Who breached the pod computer? Who turned on the gravity, opened the corridor hatch--? A cold shiver ran down Brand’s spine as he gripped his knife and stared at the open galley doors like an animal defending its burrow from a predator.

Finally, he got up and went into the corridor, staring at the last set of doors that he hadn’t yet been through. Knives in hands, he strode towards the door, which, he figured, must be the bridge. Is that where I’m going to find my ghosts? he wondered.

The door, however, refused to open. He stared at the official pronouncements on the doors, etched in that indecipherable alien tongue, and punched it, hard, with one knife-reinforced fist. The pain brought him out of his confusion.

“Hey!” he yelled at the door, “What the hell’s going on? Who’s here? Who’s ship is this?” he demanded, rapping on the door with the pommel of one of his survival knives. He stopped pounding on the door after almost three hepts had passed with no result.

He put his hands down and glanced at himself, smiling soberly. Hell, look at me, he figured, I’m a goddamn wild man. I wouldn’t let me in, either, he figured. He rubbed his face with the back of one hand and for the first time realized how scraggly and haggard his face must look like.

He wiped the remains of his meal from his chin as well and grimaced at the thought that he’d been walking around looking the way he had. If there were any crewers left. They’d’ve shot me already.

Brand went into the latrine and looked at his face in the mirrors, something he’d been too preoccupied to do earlier. He was shocked at what he saw. His face was gaunt, his eyes sunken and bloodshot, with dark pouches under them. His mouth was slack, lips cracked; his skin pale and he was still wearing his safety-orange spacesuit.

He shrugged out of the spacesuit and pushed the two halves of it out into the hall and realized how skinny he was in the reflection. I’m Aldan, he realized, recognizing the detached, confused look on his face, It’s him, I’m my brother… he winced and then slammed his hand down on the countertop to break the spell.

Brand practically launched himself into the shower stall. It was a sonic shower, of course, real water would not have been wasted on a small ship, but the sensations made Brand relax immediately.

It was in a shower like this, back on the Julien Montfort that Lau and I… he squashed the thought immediately, remembering Lau’s face—her gleeful grin, her sparkling eyes, and soft curves—he collapsed slowly, sitting in the shower and letting it run. He had a huge erection, which he ignored, but the memory of Lau in the shower had been so beautiful; it was when Brand had first begun to realize that he was falling in love.

It’s like going through a door, or a barrier, She’d once told him, and he could almost hear her voice now, giggling quietly and whispering in his ear, except you don’t know you’re even at the barrier until you tear through it, and it’s in ruins behind you… that’s when you know you’re getting closer and closer to someone special…

“Behind me,” Brand whispered, “Behind me forever.” He felt anger coursing through him; anger at the lizards, anger for being here thinking about ghosts and three hundred year old ships and crews long dead when his Lau was still so fresh in his memory, so alive in his dreams… he could still hear her, feel her, taste her, smell her… he stood, slamming the shower control shut and kicking the door open.

His anger was boiling, rage, but controlled—steady; fueling him, focusing him instead of tearing him apart and breaking him down. “Fucking Lizards,” he stated as if commenting on the weather.

Brand took a comb from one of the nearby cabins and brushed his hair, a small pair of scissors from one of the females’ lockers trimmed his beard down to where he could shave the sides with a liberated razor; he kept the scruff around his mouth and on his chin.

He’d never fancied facial hair before-- his brother had always presented a scraggly appearance that Brand associated with uncomfortably—but for some reason, now the goatee seemed right. He brushed it out as well, and glared at himself in the mirror.

Cleaned up, groomed, fed and relieved, Brand felt that now instead of looking gaunt and scared, he now just looked lean.

Lean and hungry, isn’t that how the old saying goes? he asked himself, unsmiling. Lean and hungry. And it wasn’t for food.

*** ***

Brand went through the lockers until he found a flight suit that fit reasonably well. The Captain had been smaller than he was, but one of the other males on the crew had a frame similar to Brand’s, so he helped himself to the man’s belongings.

He moved into the Captain’s cabin and took the crewer’s clothes with him, and noted that whoever had abandoned the ship had very simple, nondescript patches and badges for delineating rank, duties, or whatever. A single silver pip was on each collar, and a round patch was on the right shoulder. It featured a sword with wings on a backdrop of stars; around it was some more alien script.

The Captain’s clothes featured the same patch but with four pips arranged in a square on the end of the collar. Brand decided to switch them with the clothes he had, since he figured he was now the closest thing to a Captain that the vessel had. Another man supplied Brand with a passable set of boots.

He then re-collected his spacesuit and arranged it in one of the cabins, wishing he had an oxygen and power feed for it. The Captain’s room also had a full-length mirror on the inside of the cabin door. Brand stared at himself for a long time, not recognizing the dark figure that stared back at him.

“Maybe I am the ship’s ghost, now,” he mumbled. He wondered what would happen in another three hundred years, when some other hapless traveler got trapped aboard the ship and found his dark-clad skeleton lying on the bed. Would I haunt him? Could I?

Brand had arranged everything as he liked it; now he had to face that fact that he had nothing to do but confront his own thoughts. He thought about the Julien Montfort, but those thoughts led to Lau and his mood darkened.

Thoughts of the lizards likewise angered him, but when he fantasized about killing them, personally, with my bare hands, he felt more in control of himself. He wondered about his time at the University—which made him wonder if there was going to be a search party out looking for them. They have to be searching for us! he realized. He wondered what would happen—How would it unfold?

He could imagine the communication to the Transit Authority: Lost ship, Kiene University, the CCTV Julien Montfort, crew of fourteen, students and teachers, gone to the frontier of the Raumsfeldt Sector… yes, that’s close to the Czhierare Hegemony, you don’t think…?

Brand smiled. Oh, yes, the Czhierare Hegemony, he repeated silently to himself. Thyssa curse them all.

In his imagination the smooth, angular hull of the Trans-At patrol Cutter would emerge from hyperlight at their last known position and plot out from there; they would find the debris field and the radiation traces from heavy weapons… they would go on alert and sweep with their sensors.

Would they detect a particle trail leading them away from the site? he wondered. Perhaps the Czhierare Destroyer itself left a particle trail a blind man could follow; they’re supposed to be about five or six techgens behind the Cenrality…

Perhaps they would see the disturbed asteroid field; maybe even the wreckage of the Montfort, the bodies… Brand brushed over this thought without dwelling on it.

He’d nearly banished the last image of Lau from his mind and preferred the memory from the shower, the memory from the bed their last night together… he ignored a single, lonely tear that trickled down his cheek and dropped to the blanket of the bunk where he sat. It soaked up in the dark fabric and was gone as brand returned to his contemplations.

Or the lizards may still be here, he reasoned. Would they play innocent? No; too much battle residue. Unless they’ve sterilized the site by now… would they really be so stupid as to attack a Trans-At Cutter?

The thought was not without its attractions. The Cutter would be able to put some dents in the Destroyer but in the end the Destroyer would hack it into scrap. The next thing that would emerge from hyperlight would be a Centrality heavy cruiser…

The imagined battle that would result satisfied Brand’s hatred—in his mind, the lizards were filled with terror, running through their dying ship trying to reach escape pods, fear filling their veins… The same kind of fear I felt, Brand acknowledged.

The Destroyer’s shields, weapons, and engines would be no match for a Navy cruiser and its wings of combat torpedo craft, the Avengers… Still, Brand wished that he cold be there to deliver the death blows himself—to know that the lizards feared him as he’d once run from them…

Brand sighed and lay back on the bunk, wishing for revenge to come for him to wield. For himself, for his friends, for Lau. Beautiful Lau, shower Lau, the wedding they would have had, the children. He thought of Lau, pregnant, in his arms… and the lizards had taken it all away from him.

He wished away the Trans-At Cutter, the Central Navy cruiser. In their place he put himself, in a ship, an Avenger by himself—all combat loaded, they could fly with one person, he just had to be good, and Arawn Brand was good.

Good enough for a pack of egg-sucking lizards, anyway.

He drifted into sleep, and enjoyed his dreams for the first time in a week.




To be Continued...

[Coyote]

Empires: the Ethics of Retribution
Part V


Arawn Brand had a nightmare. It was one of many he’d suffered at aboard the strange ship, left alone with only his imagination to fill in the blanks. Day and night were gone from his world, so he slept when he felt like it– which was more and more frequent as it became evident that there was nothing to do aboard the alien ship except wait.

Brand’s nightmares usually focused on a theme; either the lizards found him and cornered him in the strange ship, or he wasted away, crumbling to dust as the next wayward traveler found the silent vessel and wondered. But tonight’s nightmare was different.

In it, he replayed the final destruction of the Julien Montfort in all its glory: the corridors bathed in red light, the drone of the sirens alerting the crew before atmosphere was voided... it came back to him, insistent and real, and he could even hear is heartbeat and raspy breath in his spacesuit. And Lau... always with Lau.

And still, the sirens continued.

Brand sat straight up in bed, his heart pounding and his ears ringing to some far-off din that continued to sear at his consciousness as his mind re-focused.

He did not know what day it was, or how many days he’d been in the alien ship, or even how long it had been since his last brush with civilization aboard the Julien Montfort. It was years ago; it was yesterday– and why won’t those damned alarms shut the hell up? He wondered, Now it’s as if I hear them even when I’m awake.

He swung his feet out from the bed, and once his bare feet made contact with the deck he realized with a start that he was, indeed, awake and there were, indeed, alarms sounding.

Brand leapt to the door and peered into the corridor, crazed fear gripping him. Lizards! His mind screamed. He didn’t realize that he’d screamed it out loud as well. The corridor was bathed in red light, no other doors were open except–

–Except the bridge door, which for the first time lay wide open for him. Grabbing his survival knife, he ran for the hatchway and prepared to confront whoever, or whatever, was there. He was prepared for anything, or so he thought, anything that is except for what he found.

An empty room, full of controls and six chairs affixed to magnetic slide rails. Colorful lights blinked innocently, almost inviting were it not for the red-tinged light and alarms. But nobody, not even a robot, sat at the controls.

Brand entered the room, his eyes darting from station to station, finding no clue about the ship’s former occupants. As he reached the center of the bridge, one panel came alive with a holographic image, which Brand instinctively lunged at.

His knife passed right through the image, which he recognized as a schematic of the asteroid the vessel was in. A small green representation of the ship itself sat in the center, and Brand admired the sleek, knife-like shape of the craft. But what was highlighted by the holo itself were the two approaching forms, the unmistakable ‘H’ form of Czhierare parasite fighters.

“Shit,” Brand exclaimed, panic seizing him. The alien craft was much larger than the Czhierare scouts, there was no way that they could miss its presence. And the lizards were already making a beeline to Brand’s discarded lifepod. He looked towards the front of the bridge, at the small view screens that served as windows.

The lizard ships were engulfed in pitch blackness, but the image created by the ship’s sensors quite clearly showed them for what they were. On the holographic representation, yellow cones indicating sensor scans emanated from the lead fighter and highlighted Brand’s lifepod.

The rest of the bridge began to come to life. One station began to hiss static and what Brand recognized as the typical noises of background stellar radiation, which quickly narrowed to what must be the lizard frequency. Encrypted pulses were broken down and after a moment, Brand could hear recognizable khurr’is-sh, the language of the Czhierare.

Another holo activated, and images of different types of ships flashed, some of which Brand recognized but many being completely unknown to him. It became evident that the ship’s computer could find no match for the Czhierare when Brand began to realize that the images were beginning to repeat themselves.

“Czhierare,” Brand muttered, wondering if the computer could hear or even understand him, “Shz-hee-rar-ree", he said aloud, looking around the bridge for some sign of acknowledgment. On the holographic representation, the yellow lock of the lizard scanners became a red lock of a weapons targeting computer.

Somewhere in the computer core of the alien ship a decision was made, and the Czhierare fighter craft was added to the library of vessels, highlighted in red. Another display came to life, a detailed schematic of the alien craft in green, which became coated in a mesh of yellow shielding– and at numerous points, red turrets began to activate.

And that wasn’t all– from the stern of the ship there came a steady, rising hum, and the deck plates vibrated slightly with the familiar feeling of a primary power core coming on line.

“Yes, yes!” Brand cried with a sense of deliverance.

Outside, the lifepod was pulverized by a flash from the lizard fighter’s cannon. Bits of ruined, briefly liquified and cooled droplets of metal rained on the shields of the enemy fighters and on the alien vessel as well, providing a brief kaleidoscope of color in the cavern. The fighters then swung to cover the alien ship, and subjected it to thorough scans.

The chittering language of the lizards filled the airwaves as the pilots conferred, and alternately tried hailing the alien or the Destroyer, doubtless waiting nearby.

In the bridge of the mysterious ship, the control board which Brand had identified as the communications console lit up and overwhelmed the Czhierare transmissions with noise. This brought red weapons lock images to the holodisplay, and an immediate reaction from the strange vessel.

The first fighter exploded in a brilliant blossom of yellow-orange, showering its partner with debris that threatened to overwhelm its shields. Before the second fighter could react, however, a blue beam lashed out from the alien ship and held the Czhierare fighter in place while bridge control lights lit up in a cacophony of color.

Brand watched, fascinated, as the fighter’s status was revealed on a threat-board holodisplay. The enemy vessel was in the firm grip of the alien’s tractor beam, holding the Lizard craft helpless in its grip. Brand relished the thought of the pilot, terrified in his cockpit, staring in wide-eyed fright at the surprising turn his life had suddenly taken.

“Kill him!’ Brand shouted at the unknown entity that controlled the ship, “Kill that egg-sucking lizard son of a bitch!” The Czhierare pilot made the decision easy– he fired at the alien craft, pummeling the shields and sending Brand to the deck.

But Arawn Brand did not care– his adrenaline had largely taken control of his higher thought processes. He picked himself up from the floor, howling a blood-curdling battle cry as the lizard craft was pulverized by fire from the alien.

“Too bad, so sad,” Brand mocked aloud without realizing it. He went to the console that was most obviously the pilot’s and seated himself there, buckling in and reaching for the stick.

“There’ll be more,” he announced, “So we better be ready for them.” Punctuating Brand’s words was the sudden cry of the proximity alarm. Outside the asteroid, a very large contact was manifesting itself.

“That’s the Destroyer,” Brand said, a slight twinge of nervousness in is voice, “They’ll sit out there and bomb the hell out of us if we don’t move.” He fidgeted with a variety of controls, trying to get the ship to do something that would acknowledge his presence.

For a few segs, nothing happened, but then the ship lurched to life, apparently of its own volition. Shit, Brand realized, this thing is totally on its own. I’m just a piece of meat strapped in for the ride.

The alien vessel’s presence must have been scanned by the lizard ship, Brand noted, for the Destroyer began to maneuver its bow towards the fissure of the asteroid, and four parasite fighters disengaged themselves from the outer skin. Four, plus the two destroyed inside. . . I think that’s all these things carry.

The alien vessel surged forward, and Brand could feel an unmistakable vibration of machinery emanating from the deckplates below him. Could the ship already be coming apart? Brand wondered, fidgeting in his seat.

There was a sudden rush of air and the deck shuddered once again, much more noticeably. The tactical holodisplay clearly showed a bright yellow point of light rushing from the nose of the alien, homing on the Czhierare Destroyer. Torpedo, Brand realized, his heart racing.

The torpedo raced towards the Destroyer, detonating not on the vessel’s shields but in the center of the cluster of Czhierare ships. Arcs of electricity danced across the hulls making auroras of color, landing lights flaring on suddenly and then going out.

“Oh, hell,” Brand muttered, “We’re going right through ‘em, ain’t we?” The tactical holodisplay widened its vista and animated lines plotted a course through the Czhierare vessels and out into the asteroid field. The lizard ships flickered with multiple lights like holiday decorations before finally going dark.

“Is that it?” Brand asked, “Is that all? No, no, no...” he grumbled, watching the window-like viewscreens project the panorama around him. The lizard ships, their hulls half-lit and half-dark from the nearby sun, seemed to be little more than powerless floating hulks. Is their life support out too? He wondered.

The thought of the lizards suffocating to death slowly in their ship as the air ran out appealed to him, but he wanted something a little more. . . personal. He wrestled with the control stick.

“C’mon, c’mon,” he growled, “Let’s finish the job. Let’s kill ‘em, God-damn it!” For a moment he was back on the bridge of the Julien Montfort, the bridge awash with red light and the only power from the emergency batteries. . . he averted his eyes from the screens, refusing to take the chance that Lau Maktla’s body would be seen out there.

Shower. Bed. Hair, he reminded himself, trying to keep the good memories running. It did nothing to calm him. In fact, it only served to stir the stew of injustice that was bubbling over.

“Oxy-starving is too good for them,” he said, looking around the ship’s bridge, trying to make some sort of connection with the intelligence that was controlling the vessel. The ship didn’t listen, however, and Brand was able to observe the vessel’s progress as it swung around behind an asteroid and park there.

“What in the hell is going on,” he asked aloud, finally raising his voice. A holodisplay popped into being beside him, causing him to jump back in his chair.

Alien writing appeared in the holo, slowly and deliberately. It was not an automated readout, or a status report, or anything routine. It's too. . . obvious. And it was the same alien script that Brand had seen everywhere else on the vessel. He stared at it, slowly shaking his head.

“I don’t understand,” he said, intrigued and nervous at the same time. The ship had powered down, and in the silence, the thoughts of ghost ships and their malevolent crews began to come back to him. The writing disappeared and was replaced by an image of the lizard ships.

“Czhierare,” he said, like he had earlier, “Shz-hee-rar-ree”.

“CZHIERARE,” was repeated back to him. Brand froze in place, his heart pounding. He stared at the display, his senses on high alert, his mind fighting to maintain control and assimilate what had just happened.

He was not even aware of how his whole body was trembling with anxiety. Another image appeared, this time, one of a man dressed in one of the uniforms of the ship’s previous crew.

“Man, uh, human,” he said. His vision blurred with the stress and the drops of sweat rolling down his face. His ears strained to pick anything out of the silence of the vessel. The quiet rush of the ventilation system seemed like the shuffling noises of hundreds of zombies making their way down the corridor towards him. His fists clenched until is knuckles were white when the voice spoke again.

“HUMAN,” the voice repeated, and again Brand’s mind was racing to stay calm while identifying the voice. It was fairly androgynous, and seemed to have some kind of accent, but Brand could not pinpoint what kind.

Of course, of the, what, several millions of accents and dialects in the Known Galaxy, I’ve encountered maybe a dozen? He looked around for a camera, couldn’t find one, and figured it was the other guy’s tough luck if he couldn’t see clearly. He pointed to himself.

“Arawn Brand,” he said, “I’m from Kreaje.” The voice did not reply, but instead showed an image of a planet, rotating slowly so that he could see all of it. It was completely unknown to him. “No,” Brand said, “Kreaje. Kreaje, Ianaca Sector,” he identified. A stream of gibberish came back at him.

“T’AIKTA YUZA GARRAN?”
“Shit,” Brand replied. “I don’t know what you’re saying. Who are you? Can’t you just come up here?” he looked around, still saw no one and no other faces on any of the screens, and no footsteps or any other signs of life. He clutched at his knife, angry, edgy, and becoming more nervous.

“THIS IS UNDERSTANDABLE TO YOU?”

“Yes! Yes, yes, dear Thyssa, please stay right there!” he screamed in sudden emotion release, almost sobbing the words, as tears of relief began to stretch from his eyes.


***
To be continued...

[Coyote]

Empires: the Ethics of Retribution
Part VI

Arawn Brand was emotionally strung out. Taken by force to nearly every emotional extreme imaginable within just a few days had left its mark. And now, hearing another voice– finally having someone he could communicate with after his seeming eternal week of hell– left Brand emotionally drained. Relief and anxiety both warred within him as he struggled with this new discovery.

“Dear Thyssa, who are you?”

“THYSSA?” The voice asked– not a statement. Brand smiled, a cunning, caged-wolf smile. Oh, I’m not that far gone, he said to himself, partially as a reassurance.

“I know you’re not Thyssa,” Brand replied, “She’s not real. I mean, well... she was real, but it would have been thousands of years. . .” Saying it reminded Brand of just where he was. The ship itself, if his guess was correct, was anywhere from three-to-four-hundred years old itself. . . So who am I talking to? He wondered.

His mind conjured up images of people in cryo-freeze, down in some undiscovered bowels of the ship. . . There hasn’t been a sickbay, he realized, or a supply room. Were Djeriessi-era robots this dependable?

He sat back, his mind too tired to work the demanded overtime. Between peaks of adrenaline and valleys of despair his body was beginning to rebel. He felt a cold coming on.

“THYSSA,” the voice began, “ BARRANACLEA PROVINCE OF LATE IRON AGE TSONARR. PRIMARY SOURCE OF INSPIRATION FOR ‘THYSSAN’ RELIGION, BASED ON EVENTS DESCRIBED IN THE BOOK OF THE WAY.” Brand sat back, blinking for a moment and wondering if he should go get some water.

“Uh, yeah, well, that about covers it,” he responded, his suspicion turning more and more to either a robot or a computer. Why would a 400 year old guy fresh out of cryofreeze be able to rattle that off the top of his head?he figured, Because he can’t. Only a ‘bot could spout that out so quickly.

“So, how about helping me out some? Who are you?” What are you? Only silence came back. Brand stood, and faced the tactical display holo. The lizard ships were still there, although it appeared that there were signs of life stirring on them again. The parasite fighters were moving around, lighting the area with yellow-tinted scan beams.

“You know, they’re bound to find us sooner or later,” Brand reminded the robot, or computer, on the other side of the comm. When no answer came, he grunted and went to the hatch, jamming one of his knives into the slide path, and got a bottle of water from the small galley.

Brand returned to the bridge, contemplating his knife and deciding to leave it where it was. He took a couple drinks from the bottle before realizing that something about the tactical holodisply had changed. The alien ship had allowed itself to drift away from the asteroid it was behind and was now facing the Czhierare vessels squarely in open space.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing!?” Brand demanded, reaching for the controls, which were unresponsive. Heavily armed, fast, or not, the Destroyer was still far larger than the small alien vessel. And it had fighter support. But then again. . . Brand noticed that the lizards had not reacted to the presence of the alien, which meant. . .

“Masker, eh? HAA-hahahaaa!” he could not help but laugh aloud. Now I understand, he realized, when life gets to the bottom you have nowhere to go but up. The alien ship had saved his life, both by rescuing him and by destroying the lizard fighter craft, and then dodging the small fleet now looking for him.

And now he could sit and observe them all he wanted because the alien ship had a Masker as well as torpedoes and blaster turrets.

A hiss and crackle from the communications board startled Brand. He spun to face a holo of a lizard fighter pilot. His senses went on alert at the sight. The lizard wore a helmet of some sort and had what looked to be a mix of military alphanumerics, unit crests, and personalized writing in khurr’is-sh. The transmission was answered by another lizard with a simple headset.

A brief flurry of transmissions followed before the flights of fighters broke into groups of two and began racing away from the Destroyer. The tactical display immediately began plotting trajectories and velocities of each fighter group, finally outlining one team in orange as it flew past, oblivious to the presence of the their prey. Brand’s face split into a feral grin as the alien ship came about to pursue the smaller fighters.

The fighter images scanned the area in a widening, and very unimaginative, search pattern. Scan beams, invisible in reality, were given a pale yellow presence on the tactical display. Beams sometimes flickered across the alien ship, causing Brand to tense, but they invariably moved off, completely fooled by the alien’s stealth device.

The commo board continued to tap into the lizard transmissions, and adding words to its building library of khurr’is-sh, while another board came to life and began making scans of its own. Brand was surprised to find that he could recognize some of the symbols on this one, although it was in an area that he was largely out of his depth.

“Your scientific symbols are the same,” he observed aloud. He recognized metallurgical symbols for nickel and iron, as well as a few other common compounds found lying about the endless reaches of the galaxy. If the asteroids are typical nickel-iron rocks, then they’ll do nothing to block the lizard transmissions to the mother ship.

“Whatever you’re going to do, you better do it quick,” he said. He watched the lizard ships, so close and yet not getting any closer, as the alien maintained its station over a hundred kilometers behind them.

Brand deduced what the alien ship was doing when it became obvious that the Destroyer was slipping farther and farther away as the fighters spread their search out wider, and the lizards became more and more impatient.

The Czhierare crews had nothing to report, and comm traffic between ships dwindled. It was sometimes several hepts between contacts, and much of that had the tone of routine, when the alien began to decrease the distance between itself and the two fighters it had selected. Before long, Brand was practically looking at the tailbooms of the Czhierare fighters.

“Let’s do it,” he growled, his hands twitching in nervousness. Life may have changed for the better, he thought, but only my living conditions have improved. I’m still a helpless observer in my own life. Even revenge won’t be mine. “When this is over,” he said to the console, “you and I are going to have a little talk.”

The attack happened so fast that Brand was not even sure it had commenced until the first lizard fighter exploded in space before him. The commo board was suddenly awash in white noise and the lizard faces faded from the holodisplays as a lance of light pierced the hull of the first fighter.

It erupted in a ball of fire, sending shredded metal everywhere. The other fighter was peppered with debris, weakening the shields and hull in areas that were highlighted on the tactical display.

“Yeah! Kill him! Kill him!” Brand screamed, pounding the console in anger. But nothing happened– the lizard fighter sat in space, held fast by the alien’s tractor beam. “What the hell!?” he demanded of the console.

The fighter’s image filled the tactical holo as it became obvious that something was happening to the smaller ship– sections of it were being attacked, one by one, and shut down as the alien overrode the hapless fighter’s computer defenses. The enemy communications were first, then the fighter’s drive systems, and finally it’s core processors.

“What’s the plan?” Brand asked, now intrigued. He looked at the chrono, counting down the time since the last contact was made with the Destroyer. The takedown had all happened within about one and a half hepts, and they had plenty of time left before the lizards were expected to check in again.

He looked back at tactical in time to see the fighter open its hatch and expose the pilot to the vacuum of space. The helpless creature squirmed in panic as the ejection seat was activated, and Brand watched without emotion as the lizard– his enemy– went sailing into the void.

“I think you and I are going to get along just fine,” Brand whispered, “But we still need to have a talk about the whole control issue.” Belowdecks, the whirring and vibration of machinery told Brand that the drama was not yet complete. “Yeah, I figured something was up when you didn’t just destroy that other one.”

A single torpedo was ejected from the forward tube, but it was not projected on any course or velocity– it was simply released, and allowed to drift into the arc of the tractor beam. Another beam took hold of the bomb and directed it towards the fighter, placing it gently in the space between the pilot’s cabin and the forward cannon pod.

“You sneaky devil,” Brand admired. The alien then maneuvered away from the now-derelict fighter and waited. It was one of the most savory periods of waiting in Brand’s life, and his imagination allowed him to enjoy the time in pleasant, if cruel, contemplation.

The commo countdown reached its end and as expected, the image of the lizard at the Destroyer’s communications board flickered to life. Brand grinned at the inquisitive tone of the creature on the other end of the link.

It took several unsuccessful attempts before the face of another lizard fighter pilot appeared on the holo, and after a brief discussion with the Destroyer, it was evident that another pair of fighters was on its way.

“Come and get it,” Brand said, and snapped his fingers over the console. “Hey. Hey! We need to talk,” he insisted, “While I appreciate you kicking these lizards’ asses, I’d like to remind you that you wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me. . . you’d still be buried in that God-forsaken rock back there waiting for your crew which is, I’m pretty damn sure, probably Goddamn dead by now.”

Silence greeted him, but he had the feeling that something was listening to him. “Do you realize how long it has been since you were parked there?” he asked, “Do you know what year it is? Do you know that the Djerissi Hegemony collapsed over three hundred years ago?”

“. . . “

It wasn’t much, but it was a brief, and very faint, hiss of static– like someone transmitting through a personal communicator would key the transmit button as if he had something to say, only to be caught short by his thoughts.

“Got your attention, did that?” Brand smiled, “Look, you’re a robot or a computer or something, and you have a great deal of autonomy in your self-preservation programs,” he added, “That’s something I admire in a ship, really. . .”

Brand thought about how best to use the vessel to his advantage– preferably while it was under his control. “But the Djeriessi are yesterday’s news. It’s been replaced.”

It took several segments for the voice to reply.
“REPLACED BY WHAT?”

“Well, it’s now known as the Central Alliance,” he said, “And it’s much bigger than the old Hegemony. We’ve got a lot of others involved, too– the zhulescu, the thenn, the wanni, the Q’aab–“ Brand looked at the tactical display. It would be another eight hepts or so for the other fighters to reach their position.

“THE Q‘AAB ARE PART OF THIS ‘CENTRAL ALLIANCE’. DO HUMANS LIVE AMONG THEM?”

“Ha! Oh, no. . . No humans live among the Q’aab, well, maybe besides a few ambassadors, merchants, that sort. No, the Q’aab wouldn’t have them. The Q’aab, well. . . They’re a pretty weird group,” Brand said.

“They refused to join the old Hegemony. They were the last ones to sign on with the Centrality, and they still pretty much stick to themselves. Use a lot of their own ships, run border points, and they’re always restricting travel through their sector. Story is, that before the embassy could be built there, the Centrality had to ship in several hundred tons of rock to put the foundation on. The Q’aab didn’t want a alien building resting on their sacred soil.”

“AND THE ZHULESCU ARE PART OF THIS ‘ALLIANCE’ AS WELL.”

“Yeah,” Brand replied, finding it odd that he was having an actual conversation with an alien ship, regardless of how intelligent it seemed to be.

“The zhulescu helped build the Centrality, really. Them and the humans. Hey, look, all this history is great, but we can talk about it sometime when we’ve managed to survive the next few hepts of history ourselves, right? We’ve got more inbounds, and if you don’t know about the Centrality, then you damn sure don’t know about the lizards.”

“CZHIERARE.”

“Right. The Centrality found the Czhierare about, oh, a hundred-fifty years ago. They’re big, ugly lizards. Tail-dragging egg-suckers. Their ships are not exactly first rate combat machines,” Brand explained, noticing the approach of two more fighters on the long-range tactical holo. “They claim to want peace with us and the Centrality, like idiots, believed them. About a week ago, though, that changed.” A week ago!

“WAR HAS BEGUN, THEN.”

“Something like that. I don’t think that the Central government is aware of it yet. We aren’t due back for awhile– we’re kind of out on the frontier here, and we try to stay away from the lizards because as you’ve seen, they’re crazy. And stupid.”

“THEN THIS WILL BE A VERY BRIEF AND ONE-SIDED WAR. THEIR TECHNOLOGY AND COMBAT PROWESS IS SUBSTANDARD AT BEST.”

“Yes, that would be a fair assessment. But look,” Brand said, his hand resting on the control stick, “We’ve got a couple of them approaching. I’m a pilot, okay, and if you’re willing to work with me–“ The vessel shuddered as a torpedo was loaded.

Brand looked at the tactical display and saw that the image of the alien ship was still in muted, almost transparent colors, which seemed to be the indicator that the Masker system was engaged.

The lizard ships were in bright, distinctive colors, and were oblivious to the alien ship. Their scans had locked on to the derelict fighter and they approached, carefully examining the area with their targeting computers.

“WAIT UNTIL I AM ABLE TO DISABLE THEIR COMMUNICATIONS.” Brand pursed his lips, wondering if that meant that he’d be able to take control afterwards, or if the computer would think about it at that point. “THE LARGER VESSEL IS APPROACHING AS WELL AND WILL BE HERE IN ANOTHER THREE HEPTS.”

“Then lets wait and spring the trap when–“ Brand was interrupted by the eruption on the screen, portrayed in the holo as a beautiful and rapidly-expanding globe of violet color that engulfed the fighters, causing their electronics to spark, flare and die.

Again, tractor beams seized control of the fighters and the alien vessel’s electronic warfare programs went to work, shutting down any remaining systems and holding the ships helpless. This time, however, the pilots were not ejected.

“THIS WILL BE PITIFULLY EASY,” the voice said, and Brand sat up, unsure. Maybe I was better off in the pod? he wondered briefly. At least the pod didn’t make its own decisions. “TELL ME, ARAWN BRAND, OF KREAJE IN THE IANACA SECTOR, IF THE CENTRAL ALLIANCE IS THE DIRECT INHERITOR OF THE DJERIESSI HEGEMONY’S LEGACY?”

“I suppose, yeah. . . I mean, we had all the contacts made by them, a lot of the ships left over, and the colonies that were re-integrated. . . but the aliens like being a part of the Centrality. The Hegemony was, well, not as open-minded. . .”

“AND THE CZHIERARE HAVE ATTACKED THE CENTRALITY?”
“Well, they attacked my ship.”

“AND THE CENTRAL ALLIANCE CREW SUFFERED CASUALTIES?”
Brand sat back, clenching his teeth.

“ARAWN BRAND?”
“Yeah. We suffered casualties.”

“I DETECT A GREAT DEAL OF STRESS IN YOUR VOICE,” the console replied, “YOU WERE CLOSE TO THE CREW?”
“Some of them,” he replied, looking out the viewscreen ‘windows’ at images that only he could see, against the backdrop of the helpless lizard fighters.

“ARAWN BRAND, THE ENEMY APPROACHES.” Brand banished the unbidden images from his mind. Oddly enough, he’d not been thinking of Lau, but rather the blackened form of Engineer Shavi. There were a lot of deaths to atone for, Brand reasoned. He felt guilty for concentrating only on his most personal loss.

“These creatures killed the woman I was going to marry,” he announced, “They burned the atmosphere in the engineering hull and killed more people, as well as my best friend and my mentor. And I don’t even know why,” he said, and looked at the tactical display. His hand stroked the control stick like a lover’s caress. “I would really, really like to take out a bit of my anger and frustration on them.”

“ARAWN BRAND, YOU ARE NOT YET OF COMPETENT MENTAL CAPACITY TO OPERATE ME IN COMBAT” Brand sat back and absorbed the statement. To operate me in combat. It was the ship itself talking. He began to wonder if he was dreaming everything. For all I know, I could still be passed out in my spacesuit, starved of oxygen.

“They will attack you,” he said, “They will not leave any survivors.”
“THE ENEMY VESSEL POSES SOME THREAT,” the voice acknowledged, “BUT I HAVE THE ADVANTAGE IN STEALTH.”

“There is that,” Brand agreed, increasingly nervous as the ship made evidence of its increasing autonomy and self-awareness. This damn ship could decide to go flying around the galaxy with me inside, starving to death as surely as if we sat in that asteroid. “Hey, look, is there a name or designation you go by? I think we need to work out a deal here. A partnership, at least.”

“THERE IS NO TIME, ARAWN BRAND. THE CZHIERARE DESTROYER IS UPON US.”

Like a mother coming to a rough playground in search of her beaten children, the Destroyer bulled its way into the area where the last of the fighters had been dispatched. Active scans lit the area and flickered over them, questing for them yet blinded all the same.

Brand sat, tense and helpless, his emotions growing numb. His mind and body both were rejecting any more extreme stimuli, and staring down the targeting scanner of his hated tormentor threatened him with such a wash of emotion that all he could do was shut his fear off.

“What do you want me to do?”
“TELL ME WHERE THEY ARE VULNERABLE.”

“Give me control and I will take them out.”
“YOU CANNOT OPTIMIZE MY CAPABILITIES.”

“I know lizards,” he lied.
“BUT YOU DO NOT KNOW ME.”

“And whose fault is that!?” Brand demanded, worry beginning to seize him, “I’ve been here for how long, how many days, and you’ve done nothing!” he punched the console.

“It was pretty damned obvious that someone was after me– so you knew you should have been asking me for information, we should be well past this by now, not arguing about it while a goddamn lizard Destroyer is sitting in front of us!” He paused, sweating again, nervousness building in him and his powerlessness heightening it.

“MAGNETIC GRAPPLES,” the voice– the ship– said, as if making a casual and unintentional observation. Brand shook his head to clear the confusion welling inside.
“What?”

“THE ENEMY VESSEL IS USING MAGNETIC GRAPPLES TO RETRIEVE ITS FIGHTERS,” the voice replied. Brand looked at the screen, which confirmed what the ship had told him. The image magnified, in fact, to provide Brand a better view.

“Yeah. . .yeah, you’re right. So let’s blast the goddamn fighters before they’re retrieved and fixed!” He cursed the machine for its stupidity– and before he knew it, was slammed violently to the floor and held in place.

“ARAWN BRAND, YOU ARE THE ONE THAT HAS BROUGHT THIS WAR TO ME, AND I SHALL FIGHT IT ACCORDING TO MY CAPACITY.” In agony, feeling physical pain rather than simple extreme discomfort for the first time in several days, Brand fought against the increased gravity that held him pinned to the deck of the alien’s bridge.

“I AM IGNORANT OF 367.4 YEARS OF GALACTIC HISTORY, BUT I KNOW SHIP COMBAT IN A WAY THAT YOU WILL NEVER COMPREHEND. YOU WILL THEREFORE TAKE MY ADVICE IF YOU WANT TO ESCAPE THESE CZHIERARE.

"BECAUSE IF YOU ENTERTAIN ANY NOTIONS OF ENGAGING ME IN A SUICIDE MISSION AGAINST THESE CREATURES, I WILL PIN YOU TO THE DECK UNTIL YOUR BONES ARE DUST IN MY CIRCULATORS.” Brand moaned in response.

“Okay. . .okay,” he rasped, his lungs fighting for oxygen within a chest that felt like it was on fire from pain. Are my ribs cracked? He wondered. His ankles and knees hurt, as well as his hands and wrist where he had tried to catch himself instinctively. The pain eased somewhat, but his body was still wracked with agony.

“IF WE ARE BOTH TO SURVIVE, YOU HAVE TO TRUST ME.” On the screen, the enemy fighters were secured to the side of the enemy hull. The lizard med teams would already by working to get the pilots out of the smaller ships. “AND I HAVE TO TRUST YOU, AS WELL, ARAWN BRAND. NOW TELL ME WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING BETWEEN YOU AND THESE CZHIERARE.”

Brand gasped, forming words against the gravity. The ship had eased its grip on him somewhat, but he was still securely pinned to the deck by the invisible hand from the deckplate.

“University students,” he admitted, “Graduate mission. I was going for a degree in advanced starship ops. I figured I’d get an astrogator’s licence, find a ship. . . “ he had to stop, exhausted by the effort already. The grip on him eased a bit more as he caught his breath.

“AND THESE CZHIERARE ATTACKED YOUR TRAINING VESSEL.”
“Yes.”

“THE STUDENTS AND INSTRUCTORS?”
“All dead. I didn’t lie about that. The ship was unarmed. I escaped in the pod.”

“WHY DID YOU WANT ME TO BELIEVE THAT YOU WERE PART OF A CENTRALITY GOVERNMENT VESSEL?”
“If you believed that the Centrality was part of the old Hegemony, you’d automatically protect it and help me.”

“HELP YOU TAKE REVENGE.”
“Yes,” he admitted. Silence reigned for awhile before the voice came back.

“NEVER LIE TO ME, ARAWN BRAND, FOR YOU ARE VERY POOR AT IT. YOU ARE IGNORANT ABOUT A GREAT MANY THINGS, AND IF YOU INTEND TO TAKE A PROPER REVENGE ON ANYONE, YOU HAVE A GREAT DEAL TO LEARN.” With that, the grip that held Arawn Brand disappeared, and he felt normal human-standard gravity again.

He picked himself up slowly, ready to be sent tumbling to the deck again. He felt cowed and revealed, stripped of the raw anger he’d been percolating over the days and trying to replace the empty spot with a more calculating anger.

But the ship was right– he’d had no practice at calculating anger, only reacting to pain. The disintegration of his family and his parents’ inability to stop it, as certain as the disintegration of the Julien Montfort and his inability as its pilot to stop that– or save Lau and the rest.

“BEGIN LEARNING NOW, ARAWN BRAND. I HAVE OFTEN DISCOVERED THAT HUMANITY’S WORST ENEMY IS PATIENCE, OR THE LACK OF IT. HAD WE ATTACKED YOUR WAY, WE WOULD BE IN A PITCHED BATTLE WITH A LARGER ENEMY OF UNCERTAIN CAPABILITY.

"BUT NOW THAT THE ENEMY HAS TAKEN IN ITS DAMAGED FIGHTERS, AND EXPOSED ITS COMPUTERS TO THE INVASIVE PROGRAMS I LEFT IN THE FIGHTERS’ PROCESSING CORES, WE NOW FACE AN ENEMY OF GREATLY DIMINISHED CAPACITY.”

Arawn Brand’s enemy sat, dark and drifting, in space.



To be Continued...

[darthdavid]

This story RAWKS!!!

[Prozac the Robert]

I'm impressed. I look forward to seeing more.

[frigidmagi]

Oh this is very, very good. I eargly await ship to ship combat.

[speaker-to-trolls]

Kick ass story!, looking forward to future developments.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

That cannot be a computer.

[speaker-to-trolls]

That cannot be a computer.

Why not?, this is science fiction, maybe the Djiressi(?) Hegemony programmed it to speak like that.

[Coyote]

The last remaining door on the level Brand was on was unlocked. Inside was something that he had begun to suspect but was still surprised to finally see: a weapons locker. Several of the holders were empty, but a collection of four pistols remained, as did four rifles.

They were of dull matte-black composite material, very light, with few metallic parts. The design was like nothing Brand had seen before, yet there was an odd familiarity to them at the same time.

The weapons locker was off to one side of the small room. The other side of the room was simply a stairwell going down into the ship.

Directed down the stairs, Brand was led past a small but well-stocked sickbay, an open-bay barracks room and a storage area with airlocks off to each side. Beside each airlock were two matte-black, puncture-resistant and reinforced spacesuits.

“NOT JUST SPACESUITS,” the ship assured him, “EVA ASSAULT SUITS. NOT AS HEAVILY ARMORED AS A COMBAT BREACHING SUIT BUT MUCH MORE FLEXIBLE.”

Brand’s head was overwhelmed with the events of the last few hours. He put down the rifle, two pistols, and the several energy cells he now carried next to one of the suits.

“Enemy status?”
“ENEMY IS STILL TRYING TO REGAIN CONTROL OF BASIC SYSTEMS,” the ship informed him.
“Basic systems,” Brand muttered, “Including life support?”

“ARAWN BRAND, EVERYTHING IS SHUT DOWN OVER THERE. COMPRESSION DOORS, FIRE-SUPPRESSION, DRIVE SHIELDING, EVERYTHING.” Brand thought about that for a moment.
“So if they suffered a decompression. . .”

“THEY WOULD HAVE TO MANUALLY CLOSE WHATEVER DOORS WERE STUCK OPEN WHEN THE SHUTDOWN OCCURRED. VERY GOOD, ARAWN BRAND. YOU ARE LEARNING.”

“Great,” he replied, “And you can call me Arawn. Or Brand. One or the other.”
“VERY WELL. THEN YOU MAY CALL ME KHAREV.” Brand hesitated, rolling the name off his tongue a couple times.
“What kind of name is that?” he asked, slipping into the spacesuit.

“IT MEANS ‘SWORD’ WHERE I WAS COMMISSIONED AND BROUGHT ON-LINE,” the ship– Kharev– replied.

“And that would be. . ?”
“SOMETHING TO BE REVEALED AT A LATER TIME.”

"Mysterious type, eh? Fine," Brand acquiesced, more interested in sating his predatory desires. Somewhere in the back of his mind a sensible-- pre-Julien Montfort-- part of his brain screamed out that he was preparing to do something incomprehensibly stupid.

He'd had no military training at all, knew only the most basic principles of firing a weapon, and was about to single-handedly attack an enemy he knew little about while a alien ship he'd just found talked him through the whole process.

He shut that small sensible voice away and threw away the key, and gave himself over to the fanged hunter he was developing instead.
"How's this?" he asked, clipping a commo headset on. Kharev's voice came through the earpiece with crystal clarity.

"VERY GOOD. NOW YOU MUST FOLLOW MY INSTRUCTIONS EXACTLY. I WILL BE ABLE TO SCAN THE ENEMY SHIP AND LET YOU KNOW WHAT'S COMING. YOU'VE DONE E.V.A BEFORE?"

"Recently," he added. He had not told the ship any more about the events that had left him stranded.

"IT WILL DO. REMEMBER THAT ONCE YOU GET OVER TO THE ENEMY SHIP, YOU MUST KEEP YOUR GRAV BOOTS ACTIVATED, EVEN INSIDE. JUST IN CASE." Brand nodded his assent. Just in case. He went to the airlock and sealed his helmet onto the suit. The indicator lights all glowed green, which Brand assumed to be a good sign even if the alien words themselves were indecipherable.

"Ready," he said, and stepped into the airlock. Without a word, Kharev cycled the lock and on a puff of displaced air, he sailed out the lock and straight towards the Czhierare Destroyer, guided by Kharev's tractor beam.

Brand had a few segs to look around at the impossible, complex nothingness of deep space. He looked at his gauntleted hand and found it odd to reflect that a small sheet of fabric separated his hand from absolute void. It was a humbling perspective.

The lizard warship quickly filled his horizon and he instead marveled at how deceptively large it seemed to him. Up close, the curved hull was like a massive wall, matter to the universe's antimatter. His boots clamped to the hull and Brand was able to walk, more or less normally, towards an airlock.

"I'm on," he whispered into the headpiece.
"VERY WELL," Kharev replied normally, making Brand wince at the noise, even though his logical mind knew that his fear was baseless. He reached the airlock --it was open to space-- and stepped inside.

The lizard airlock was much more crude and basic in its appearance to what Brand was used to. Rather than a pressure lever, as Brand was expecting, the Czhierare airlock's manual-cycle device was a crank. He spun the crank and the outer doors slowly edged shut, and then the inner doors began to part slightly. Brand peered through the crack.

"Kharev?"
"THERE ARE NO LIFE FORMS IN THE NEXT ROOM," Kharev assured. Brand finished turning the crank with one hand while gripping a pistol with the other. His hands trembled, and sweat rolled down his face and from his armpits.

Dear God, what am I doing here? he wondered. He took a moment to calm his breath before stepping out of the airlock and into the room.

The Czhierare ship was dark, with only the emergency battery lights operating. Brand could hear footsteps pounding, getting louder, and he pitched himself to the floor near the base of a wall and waited, crouching, pistol pointed towards the next door in shaking hands.

"BRAND?" Kharev's voice came aross the speaker, "ARE YOU WELL?"
"No, I'm not well!" Brand hissed, "I must be out of my goddamn mind! What the hell am I doing here!?" There was no answer--

What could that psychotic ship say, after all? Brand realized, I'm already here, and I need Kharev's tractor beam to get back... "I can only go forward or die," he whispered hoarsely. He took a deep breath and forced his nerves to calm.

In doing so, he realized that the pounding footsteps was in reality his own heart, hammering away in terror. He forced himself to calm, and cracked the seal on his helmet so he could hear and smell with his own senses. The lizard ship had a musty, almost swampy smell to it. That must be the lizards themselves, Brand figured.

"Let's go," he said, sounding braver than he felt. He switched the pistol for one of the rifles-- the size and heft of it made him feel better-- and went to the next hatch.

The room he was in was full of lizard-style EVA suits. Brand spared a moment to look at them-- large, almost tent-like compared to the needs of a human, and Brand found it odd to think that they needed EVA suits too.

He stopped at the hatchway and listened to the cold metal, although he knew better than to be able to actually hear anything. But it stalls time for me, he admitted to himself. Sane means not doing this. Stepping through the hatch is insane. But then he realized that his opportunity for choice had already come and gone when he stepped into the airlock of the alien ship.

Brand clasped his hand to the crank and began turning it, slinging the rifle again in favor of keeping a pistol trained loosely at the hatchway that slowly opened. When it was big enough for him to squeeze through he stopped and poked his helmeted head around the frame. With the sound of his own breathing rasping in his ears he examined the next room.

It was designed for lizard comfort-- the room had no hard corners but was instead rounded off everywhere. Everything was, as near as he could tell from the helmet's light, muted green/grey colors. The design of the consoles reminded Brand of swamp trees, with the root systems holding the trunks up out of the water.

There was ample room underneath each console for tails to sweep around when turning, and consoles in the center of the room were elevated from the ceiling and had nothing underneath them at all.
"This is so strange," Brand heard himself whisper, "Kharev, are you getting this?"

"I AM RECORDING EVERYTHING FOR FUTURE REFERENCE," the ship assured him, "BUT THIS IS NOT A SIGHTSEEING TOUR. YOU SHOULD RESEAL THE DOORS BEHIND YOU AND PREPARE FOR THE NEXT ROOM." Easy for you to say, Brand said to himself and cranked the doors shut behind him.

He walked towards the next hatch and walked past the suspended central console, running his hand across the surface. It had an odd, gel-like consistency underneath a clear surface, but was clearly not organic technology.

"What's next?" Brand said as he reached for the door crank and began turning.
“GO INTO THE NEXT ROOM,” Kharev instructed. Brand cranked the hatchway open and stepped inside, and spun around to examine the interior of the new room. He found himself face to face with a shocked Czhierare.

The two stared, uncomprehending. The lizard’s green face floated in a sea of terrified unreality before Arawn Brand, it’s dark eyes blinking and its tail twitching nervously behind it. Both he and the lizard took a hesitant step backward, their eyes never leaving each other.

A hideous noise sounded over the comm and he realized that if he could cling to that noise and figure it out, he’d be one important step closer to figuring out what he was supposed to do. The jumble of words came in a flood over his earpiece and he sorted them out.

“...SHOOT IT, BRAND!” the voice commanded. Brand looked down at his hand where the pistol was. His arm twitched, his fingers clenched slightly, and he looked back up at the lizard, who was also bringing his own face back up to look at Brand’s.

The lizard turned his head sideways as if to yell over his shoulder while keeping Brand pinned with a look. The creature’s mouth opened.

“SHOOT HIM! BRAND, SHOOT HIM NOW!”
Brand raised the pistol in slow motion

“...SHOOT IT! SHOOT IT! SHOOT–“
the black thing in Brand’s hand seemed to rise of its own accord and Brand held it at arm’s length

“–IT! YOU HAVE TO SHOOT IT NOW–“
the barrel aligned with the lizard’s uncomprehending face

“Hirrr–“ the lizard began to call
as Brand stood there, frozen, the gun in his hand and the barrel centered
“SHOOT HIMSHOOTHIMSHOOTHIMSHOOT–“

just point this little thing here and squeeze the tiny lever and its all over, so simple, it’s just–
Brand made his decision and his finger clenched.

The pistol barked in his hand as a bolt of energy tore through time and space and lanced through the lizard’s head, it’s disbelieving eye spearing Brand with a look like how could you? as the blue-hot beam burst through the flesh, the bone, the brain, through the bone and flesh again to paint a bubbling trail of charred death against the back wall.

The carcass stood for a split second, the mouth agape, almost struggling to form gurgling sounds, and the Czhierare crewer slowly slumped to the deck, finally cascading over like the ungraceful sack of meat it had become, it’s skull sizzling.

Brand watched in perverse fascination as the droplets of liquified bone bubbled away excess heat-energy to cool in a new, unnatural form. He lowered his hand and looked at the pistol there, comfortable and innocent in his gloved hand.

Brand looked around at the room, somewhat like the first one he’d been in; that first room now seemed a million years behind him then. His fear, his terror and apprehension, everything that he’d thought so important was now seen through a lens from far, far away.

The room was silent and he could hear his own heartbeat once again, already calming and settling into its normal rhythm. He blinked and shook his head a bit.

“BRAND? ARE YOU ALRIGHT?” Brand thought about it for a second. Am I alright? he wondered, Not really, he decided, looking at the body in front of him, I don’t think I’ll ever be alright again, he concluded. But it was over. The hatch was closed.

“I guess so,” he said, since it was too late to go back and change anything now, “Why didn’t you tell me that there was someone in here?” he asked, his voice casual.

“YOU WOULD NOT HAVE GONE THROUGH THE DOOR,” Kharev responded, an Brand had to admit that the ship was probably right, in more ways than one, “YOU WOULD HAVE THOUGHT TOO MUCH AND PRE-RATIONALIZED, AND YOU WOULD BE UNABLE TO DO WHAT NEEDED TO BE DONE.”

“Maybe,” Brand said, “I guess it’s too late to worry about it now, huh?” he said, still in a state of shock. He looked at the pistol again. This did that? he wondered.

“YOU ARE STILL SEVERAL DECKS FROM THE BRIDGE,” Kharev said, “AND MORE WILL BE IN YOUR WAY. ARE YOU READY?”
“Yeah,” he said, “Yeah. Let’s, ah, go.”

“GOOD. BECAUSE TWO MORE ARE COMING DOWN THE CORRIDOR NOW,” Kharev said, snapping Brand into reality, “THEY WILL BE AT YOUR LOCATION IN ABOUT THIRTY SEGS. I SUGGEST THE RIFLE.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” Brand said, holstering the pistol and bringing the rifle to his shoulder, facing down the corridor where he could see the flashlights playing along the bulkheads as a pair of lizards approached his position. They called something in khurr’is-sh as they ambled forward.

The lizards were clearly techs, as the first one had been. They carried no weapons and clearly expected to find their companion unharmed, and no intruders present.

The loss of power was a mystery to the Czhierare crew, and the vessel swarmed with technical crews rather than security squads. The alien ship, after all, had long ago disappeared from their sensors although there was clearly something amiss it was going on out in space– but not in the corridors of their own Destroyer.

So when the techs found their companion sprawled on the deck, blood pooled around his head, their first thought was that some sort of accident had occurred. They dove for their companion and looked up at head level for a protruding rod or something to account for the wound.

Brand had all the time in the world to line up the glowing red sight dot on the first lizard’s head and steady the rifle.

The rifle roared in Brand’s hands, startling him with its insistent, raw, energy and noise.

The first lizard tech’s head erupted in multiple gouts of energy as the heat-flashed matter inside the skull managed to refract the energy beam in a myriad different directions all at once, and the skull itself shaped the burst along natural fracture lines supplied by millennia of evolution.

The other Czhierare fell back, wailing in terror, its face aligning on Brand’s and it tried to kick away from the human. Brand fired, the bolt slamming into the bulkhead next to the creature. The lizard glanced at the scorched mark as if needing that assurance that this was a very real experience for him. He rolled over and began to come to his feet.

“BRAND–“ Kharev warned.
“Shut up!” Brand screeched through the headset and fired another burst at the creature, raking its back and sending the terrified tech crashing to the deck again, bellowing and writhing in pain. Brand stood up and walked towards it, stepping carefully– almost respectfully– over the other two bodies.

The Czhierare’s terrified face was hysterical with fear as Brand leveled the rifle at it from less than a meter and pumped another bolt into the thing’s side, ending the horrible noises that it had been making.
“BRAND...”

“Shut up,” the human commanded, and he scene began to spin. The bodies, the horrible screams of the creature at his feet that had just been alive, the blood-slicked deck, the stink...

Brand dropped the rifle and his hands flew to the helmet catches. In desperation he wrestled with them, his fingers barely able to obey his commands, and he sent the helmet crashing to the deck. He barely had the clarity of thought to spin his head in the opposite direction before throwing up.

He emptied his stomach completely, and coughed out bile as the dry heaves wracked him. Tears flowed from his eyes and his throat was on fire. He spit out a lingering piece and ran his space-suited sleeve cross his face, spitting a few more times to get the horrible taste from his mouth.

His head pounded. He picked up his rifle and helmet and stumbled away from the horrific mess, collapsing to sit on the deck facing down the corridor, rifle cradled in his lap.

“Sweet Thyssa,” he gasped, “Sweet fucking Thyssa, on the path of light, guide me to your...” How did the prayer go? Glory? Forgiveness? Mercy? “Fuck, I don’t remember,” he said, “Just get me the hell out of here.” He shook his head, noting the drop of lizard blood that ran down the side, “Kharev, how do I get out of here?”

“YOU CANNOT GO BACK,” the ship said, something Brand already knew, “YOU HAVE TO FINISH THIS. WE HAVE TO FINISH THIS.” Brand sat, entranced, trying to erase the images from his mind and knowing that he never would. Finally he nodded.

“Yeah,” he agreed, and got back up.

[darthdavid]

More execellent work.

[Myrmidon]

This is pretty good stuff. I look forward to more.

[darthdavid]

I thought the'd written more, BASTARD!!! *stab*

[Coyote]

Empires: the Ethics of Retribution
Part VIII

Brand followed Kharev’s instructions up the rest of the corridor to the lift that sat there, dark and immobile. The hatchways along the corridor led to holds.

He thought about stashing the bodies in one of them but then he’d have to clean up the blood and everything else in the corridor and knew that he couldn’t. Besides, it won’t really matter if they’re discovered or not, he reasoned.

“MY SCANS INDICATE AN ACCESS WAY NEXT TO THE LIFT SHAFT,” Kharev reported, guiding Brand towards a hatchway that revealed a small– for lizard physiology– equipment room.

A strange sort of ladder emerged from the overhead panels, a semi-circular arrangement of rungs that would allow big, clumsy lizard feet to easily grab hold while tails drooped down. Brand scaled the assembly like a kid on a gym set.

On top was another hatchway that had been left open by the lizard techs. Brand poked his head up and scanned the room. It was a larger room, some sort of maintenance bay. Repair and machinists’ tools were all around the room, and two more lizard techs were working on something while battery-powered lights illuminated their work bench.

“THIS SHOULD BE DIRECTLY UNDER THE FIGHTER-BAY RECOVERY ROOM,” Kharev informed him, which made sense. Wide, shallow stairs led up to another level from which Brand could hear more noise, voices and tools. The almost fluid construction of the bulkheads and consoles distracted him for a moment. So... alien.
“BRAND?”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, wishing it wasn’t so. He picked himself up out of the floor hatch and walked towards the two techs at the first table. In the darkness he was able to get within a couple meters before the two Czhierare realized that someone was nearby.

The lizards looked up,probably expecting their buddies from downstairs, Brand figured, and almost felt bad for them as their faces went from recognition to slack incomprehension.

“Hi,” he said, “Sorry.” He raised the rifle to waist height. The lizards looked down at it, then back up at him, and he squeezed the trigger.

A torrent of energy erupted from the rifle as scythes of energy lanced through the pair of lizards in an ungraceful display of destruction. On the upper level shouts of surprise and panic were heard, and Brand could tell that there were Czhierare crewers running on the fighter deck.

He leapt for the stairs and ran up them, skipping two, three at a time, and charged onto the upper deck as lizard technicians scattered.

“Heeyyyaaah!” Brand screamed, letting loose the energetic fear that gripped his gut. Not even aiming the rifle he fired burst after burst into the cavernous bay, firing at random fleeing lizard backs.

He was dismayed to see only one of dozens of victims go down. In holoshows, the hero cuts loose with full- automatic and scores of these guys just fall over...

“BRAND! GET TO THE NEXT LEVEL!” Kharev ordered, “I CANNOT ASSIST YOU HERE AND SECURITY IS NOW ALERTED TO YOUR PRESENCE!” Everywhere, Czhierare ran for their lives, some screaming into personal comms:

“’Oomin! ‘Oomin!” they yelled as if cursing. Brand ran for the nearest hatch and was relieved to note that it was already open.

“CLOSE THAT HATCH!” Kharev instructed, and Brand began cranking like a madman. “HURRY. SECURITY FORCES ARE MAKING THEIR WAY TOWARDS YOUR POSITION.”

“Secured!” Brand hollered as the hatch sealed behind him.
“GET DOWN.” Kharev said. Brand lay prone on the deck.

“What–?” he asked, as a tremendous hammerblow rocked the ship as a violent lurch and explosion sent everything spinning. Battery-operated safety lights in the corridor flickered and then turned red.

“What the hell was that?”
“I JUST DEPRESSURIZED THE FIGHTER BAY,” Kharev said, “IT WILL BE HARDER FOR THEM TO USE THAT ROUTE TO COME UP BEHIND YOU.”
“Thanks,” Brand murmured.

“NO TIME TO WASTE,” the ship admonished him, “GET GOING BEFORE THEY USE EVA SUITS AND SURROUND YOU.” Brand got to his feet and ignored the faint hiss of escaping oxygen near the hatch behind him. It’ll be awhile before the air bleeds out, he knew, but he still did not want to stay there while it happened.

“What’s this room next to me?” Brand asked, running along a long section of hatchless bulkhead.
“MACHINE STORAGE,” Kharev said, “USED TO PROTECT WHAT LOOKS LIKE THE SICKBAY ON THE OTHER SIDE.”
“No threat,” Brand muttered as he charged past it to the next hatch. “Kharev?”

“MAIN CROSS-CORRIDOR,” Kharev replied, “SECURITY TROOPERS ARE FORMING A BLOCKADE THERE.” Brand approached the open hatch and glanced inside. A yell went up and instantly blaster bolts formed a horizontal rain of hell towards him.

He threw himself backwards and fell onto the deck in the corridor, the scene etched forever in his mind as one of the most terrifying images he’d ever seen.

“Any other ways I can go?”
“NEGATIVE,” Kharev replied, “YOU BETTER FIRE BACK,” the ship said, “THEY ARE BOUNDING TOWARDS YOU.” Brand poked his hand around the corner, pistol in hand, and fired off a few shots before reholstering it, too scared to see for himself.

“BRAND, YOU HAD BETTER DECIDE NOW IF YOU ARE GOING TO SURVIVE THIS OR NOT,” the ship said over the headpiece as lizard voices came closer, “I CAN STILL FLY AWAY. YOUR OPTIONS ARE CONSIDERABLY MORE LIMITED.”

Brand backed away from the door, angry voices hissing in khurr’is-sh just around the hatch coaming. He backed down the hall, rifle up, as a small canister of some sort sailed into the corridor and bounced off the bulkheads.

Brand dove for the deck, rolling away from the grenade. The explosion was painfully loud, and bright, and filled the corridor with an aerosol. Brand was surprised for a moment to realize that almost no shrapnel had come from the grenade. Of course, he realized, shock and gas, not something that would rupture....

Brand snapped out of his daze and sealed the helmet, which protected him from the gas, but his eyes were dazzled by the flash even with the helmet’s almost instant polarization system. He snapped off a few shots towards the hatchway and then sat on the deck and activated his grav boots, placing them firmly, flatly, on the deckplates.

“Kharev! Depressurize!”
“BRAND, ARE YOU SURE YOU–!”
“No time to argue! Now’s when you trust me! Just depressurize the goddamn corridor! Now!”
For a split segment, nothing happened.

Suddenly a bolt of energy the size of a small tree brutally pierced the unshielded skin of the Destroyer, the heat and shockwave sending Brand tumbling like a matchstick in a windstorm down the corridor, to slam painfully against the far hatchway leading to the fighter bay. Feet to deck, feet to deck, feettodeck... his mind howled at him.

The oxygen that remained in the corridor flash-ignited and sent a burst of flame arcing into the blackness of space, temporarily engulfing him but Brand didn’t see that. He did see, for sure, at least one charred lizard body being sucked out the hole as the atmosphere evacuated the section of the ship he was on.

More armor-clad bodies were pulled mercilessly through the red-glowing hole, followed by all sorts of debris and what might have been parts of bodies.
“ARAWN BRAND, ARE YOU THERE? ANSWER ME! ARE YOU–“

”I’m here, I’m here,” he called back, “Just a little shaken and singed, is all.” He pulled himself to his feet, stumbling somewhat as he tried to get his bearings, his eyes still dancing with spots from the impact against the far hatch. His left shoulder ached as well, and the deck of the corridor now seemed to be warped. Not too surprising, I suppose, all things considered. The deck was all hard vacuum now.

Brand strode down the hall, noticing that the grav plates in the deck were malfunctioning in some spots as well. His steps, crossing sometimes from patches of normal gravity to nonexistent, seemed to be the unsteady shuffling of a drunk. God, how I wish.

He passed by the gaping hole that had been blasted into the side of the ship by Kharev. I’m glad that thing’s on my side. I think. He crossed into the main corridor, avoiding the charred and still-hot edges there as well, and found the next hatchway.

“STAY AS CLOSE TO THE OUTER HULL AS POSSIBLE,” Kharev said, “IN CASE WE HAVE TO DO THAT AGAIN.”

“Again,” Brand mumbled, not wanting to replay that image in his mind of all those energy bolts coming towards him. How in the hell did I survive that? He moved carefully around a corner that looked like it had been smeared with a lizard that had been pulled along the wall by the instant depressurization caused by Kharev’s main cannon.

He went through another open hatch to a new section of corridor that was noticeably curved.

“I think I’m approaching the bow of the ship,” he said.
“INDEED YOU ARE. NOW LOOK FOR AN ACCESS TUBE HEADING UP,” Kharev volunteered. Brand found one, very similar to the one he’d found leading to the maintenance deck.

He went back and cranked the hatchway shut between the two corridors, then crawled up the curved ladder towards the hatch. He pushed at it but it refused to budge, even though the manual crank turned easily enough.

“No luck,” Brand said, “The atmosphere pressure on the other side is too strong.”
“YOU’LL HAVE TO BLAST YOUR WAY THROUGH, THEN.”
“So much for surprise.”
“I DON’T THINK THAT IS SUCH A CONCERN AT THIS POINT.”

“Point taken,” Brand said, and went back down the ladder, facing his rifle upwards and firing once, twice, and finally, a total of five times before the hatch blew away. He jumped back so that the unequal pressure wouldn’t shower him with sharp, hot debris.

A grenade sailed down the hole as well and Brand leapt for the deck, making sure not to look at the flash this time. The loud Bang! went off and Brand rolled onto his back and faced the weapon towards the ladder, but no shapes came down.

“Kharev?” Brand prompted.
“THERE ARE SIX LIFEFORMS ABOVE YOU,” the ship replied, “FROM THE BOW, THEY ARE AT ELEVEN, NINE, AND SIX O’CLOCK OF YOU.” Brand stood for as moment, contemplating that, listening to his rushed breathing in the confines of the space helmet.

His eye caught an irregularity on the helmet visor and he brushed at it with his gauntleted hand. The stain smeared, and Brand realized it was lizard blood. His stomach churned as the images from the last few hepts came unbidden to his mind, but he fought for calm.

“BRAND?” Kharev asked.
“Yeah, no problem,” he replied, “Just, ah, figuring it out.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then, opening them again, he reached for the ladder and pulled himself up. Near the top of the ladder he stopped, hooking an arm through one of the oversized rungs and bracing himself as he unslung his rifle one-handed.

Wielding it like a pistol, he set it to full-automatic and raised the weapon above him and cut loose with wild bursts in what he hoped were the general directions of the lizard defenders. He brought his hand back down quickly, overcome by gruesome images of his arm as a smoking stump melted to the sleeve of the spacesuit.

Firing continued and another grenade sailed down the hatch. Brand panicked as the canister bounced off his chest and went tumbling to the deck below. I’m dead, he thought, bracing for impact, but suddenly he realized that he had nothing to fear from the grenade, already a few meters below him. The flash and explosion went off and Brand immediately screamed in mock pain.

For a moment silence reigned. Then, a shadow moved across the hatch opening. Brand wondered which lizard lost the toss and imagined a young recruit, probably more scared than he was. Is that possible? he wondered with a grimacing smile. A head poked over the rim of the hatch and Brand pulled hard on the trigger, yelling obscenities in blind fear as he did so.

The blaster bolts cut through the lizard’s head like an axe, sending the body tumbling backwards. Other lizard voices shouted and another round of wild firing began, which Brand added to as well, first by firing directly up into the overhead and then by poking his weapon out the hatch again. Another grenade sailed down the hatch but missed him, and Brand knew they would not be so stupid as to fall for the same trick twice.

Yet another grenade was tossed and then another, which Brand smacked at with his hand, hoping to send it back into the crowd of lizards above. It bounced down a corridor and went off, and again Brand wild-sprayed the room above in the confusion.

“This has got to end sometime,” Brand muttered, “Kharev, is there anything you can do?”
“DO THEY HAVE THEIR SPACESUITS ON AS WELL?” Kharev asked, “OR COMMUNICATORS?” Brand shrugged.

“I’d assume so,” he replied, “They were calling on comm units down in the fighter bay.”
“ALLOW ME A MOMENT TO SCAN.”

“Yeah,” Brand said, “I’ll, ah, be right here.” Brand waited while up above nervous shuffling noises could be heard– more security troopers were coming. Brand had an uneasy feeling that the fighter bay was probably not going to provide a safe rear area for too much longer as well.

“‘Oomins,” came a harsh, rasping voice through a helmet loudspeaker, “Gis up! Yoo go be soo-roun-deed!”
“Yeah, fuck you, you lizard pieces of shit!” Brand screamed back, angered that they had dared to speak with him– They expect me not to care all of a sudden?

“Yoo soo-ren-door, yoo unner proo-tek-shun Prince Nizarr,” the lizard said, “No kill. Hibernate. Go home.” Brand tried to figure it out. No kill... hibernate? Go home? Who’s home?

“What the hell are you talking about!” Brand yelled, trying to buy time for Kharev while realizing that the lizards were probably trying to buy time for their own forces to come around through the fighter bay as well. “What the hell is hibernate?”

“Yoo unner... polly-tick-lal of hibernates.” Brand was seriously confused. Under the political of hibernate?
“It’s a trick!” he shouted back, unable to think of anything else.
“Is noo. Yoo– Yeeaaaahhh!

“GO, BRAND, GO! NOW!” Kharev ordered. Brand sprang from the ladder like a tightly-compressed spring uncoiling. On the deck were six lizard security troopers, clawing desperately at their commo headsets and writhing in agony.

“BRAND!” Kharev said, and he leveled his rifle at the first trooper and unleashed a burst of energy into the being’s body. The lizard flopped on the deck and died, Brand feeling disconnected from the events around him.

A calm sense of purpose overwhelmed him, and he took his eyes from the first charred body and fired at the next, then the next, and the next.

His body was operating on remote control, his mind and conscious thought were in another plane, observing and controlling his actions through a remote tether. His peripheral vision seemed to reach all the way around him and he automatically blocked out unnecessary sensory data.

Everything’s in slow motion, he realized, how convenient. How easy...

With hardly a thought, he ended the lives of all six lizards, the last two as they had tossed off their headsets and rose to face him, fear and realization in their eyes. Brand snapped out of it, standing in the middle of a pile of seven charred, blasted lizard bodies.

He looked at the disgusting carnage and could no longer feel revulsion at what he’d done– his senses were overwhelmed, and he had seen far more gruesome death in the last two weeks than most people saw their entire lives.

“BRAND, ARE YOU ALRIGHT?”
“I’m alive,” he said, surprised at how dull and flat his voice sounded to himself. “I guess that means I’m winning.”

[phongn]

This is great, Coyote.