Magnitude: A Space Opera Adventure (Blackstar Command Book 2) Read online

  “We’re losing him,” Marella said.

  “They’ll kill you like they killed us,” the XO wheezed. “They’re unstoppable. They’ll kill you all.” Another gasp, a long wheeze, and then silence.

  “Osbyrne?” Kai asked. “Osbyrne!”

  “It’s too late, Kai,” Marella said in a small voice. “He’s gone.”

  “Damn it,” Kai said, and slumped back in his seat.

  “What was he talking about?” Senaya asked. “What machines?”

  “I don’t know,” Bandar answered. “But I don’t want to stick around here to find out.”

  “We can’t just leave. There could be more out there,” Kai said.

  “Kid, that’s real noble and all, but they’re all dead,” Bandar stated bluntly. “We need to move on before we join them. We need to go to the next coordinate, find Brenna.”

  “Brenna?” Kai said, “You mean Mom, or Mother, surely. She’s family, after all.”

  “Call her what you want, kid, but she’s a GTU agent, and hell, I’ve called her Brenna for as long as I can remember. Don’t mean nothing, though, just how it is when you’re in the CDF.”

  “Surely it’d be Agent Locke in that case,” he said, staring back at Bandar.

  “Family doesn’t have to be so formal,” Bandar replied with a sly grin.

  Kai ran his fingers through his hair in frustration, even going so far as to pull it briefly, and then nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “Of course, you’re right. Senaya, lock in the coordinates for the next jump point and let’s—”

  The holocube flashed red; the warning cut him off.

  “We’ve got company, Captain,” Senaya said.

  “What? Who?”

  “Looks like Host fighters,” she said. “Must have been hiding in the wreckage. And they’re right on top of us.”

  Chapter 2

  BRENNA LOCKE THOUGHT about one of the facts rarely mentioned in films or holonovels—that the first thing a body wants to do after recovering from being knocked unconscious is to throw up.

  She hated the feeling of her rebelling stomach when she came round in alien territory. She cranked the oxygen levels up to seventy-five percent and took deep, calming breaths. She hummed a nursery rhyme while rubbing her temples and let cool air from the Rapier’s HVAC system blow directly into her face.

  Her stomach finally settled down after a few minutes of her ritual. She dropped the oxygen levels of the cockpit back to normal levels. The last thing she needed now was a case of oxygen intoxication, particularly since one of the possible side effects was vomiting. The irony wasn’t lost on her.

  All of her hard work proved to be for nothing, though. She glanced out the forward window, and the star field beyond rotated in a slow, corkscrew pattern.

  Her stomach clenched again, and she squeezed her eyes shut. She inhaled long and slow through her nose, exhaling through her mouth.

  “Son of a bitch,” she muttered, once she finally gained control of her treasonous digestive system.

  “Do you need something, Agent Locke?” the ship’s AI said over the speakers.

  “Nothing, Flick.”

  Brenna set about righting her floating ship. A thought struck her, and she stopped.

  “Ya know what, Flick? I lied.”

  “How so?”

  “I do need something.”

  “Hardly a lie, as far as my programming shows. You merely changed your mind, and I believe your culture accepts that as your prerogative.”

  “Lighten up, Flick.”

  “That is not within my parameters.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Brenna fiddled with some of the readings on her control panel.

  “What do you need, Agent Locke?”

  “I need a damage report and a full diagnostic check on the engines and control systems.”

  “Running.”

  Brenna originally wanted to turn on the engines but thought better of it. If something had happened during the battle, she didn’t want to risk blowing her engines out or, worse, cause an explosion.

  “Minor damage to the fuselage,” Flick said. “Nothing to concern yourself with at the moment. Hull integrity is at ninety-eight percent.”

  “Good to know. And the engines?”

  “Working well within their functional guidelines.”

  “Excellent,” Brenna said. She flicked her hand across her control board, and the engines powered up. A low rumble ran through the Rapier. She engaged the throttle and maneuvering thrusters, reversing the rotation and bringing a halt to that damned slow spin.

  “Finally,” she said.

  She glanced over the star charts but found them futile. She scanned the section of space but quickly realized her knowledge was equally worthless. All of her knowledge was of Coalition space. Nothing looked at all familiar.

  “Flick, do you have any idea where we are?”

  “Outside of Coalition space.”

  “I kind of figured that.”

  “Then what was the reason for the inquiry?”

  “I was just hoping that maybe there was some kind of information gathered from the Navigators in this part of the galaxy in your memory.”

  “If that information was available, logic dictates it would be included in the star charts.”

  “Yes, Flick, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Brenna sighed and shook her head and thought that maybe she should have Flick put in a requisition for a ship’s cat. At least a feline wouldn’t frustrate her.

  “Okay, Flick, do you have the ability to scan and store this quadrant?”

  “Indeed, Agent Locke,” the AI replied.

  Brenna thought she caught the barest hint of sarcasm in the tone, but let it go.

  “Do you have enough memory for that?”

  “Yes. Since it will not be actual video of the sector, but rather a simulation, it should not take up much room.”

  “Good. Get on that.”

  “Working, Agent Locke.”

  While Flick scanned and stored the positions of the stars, Brenna set to work on bringing one of the Rapier’s probes online. She tapped in the search parameters and adjusted the onboard sensors.

  “I could have done that for you,” Flick said.

  “You’re busy at the moment, and I didn’t want to wait until you finished to find out where the Veil is.”

  “I have the ability to multitask, given my two hundred and four CPU cores, most of which go unused around here.”

  There was that tone again. Did Felicity—or Flick as Brenna thought of it—have the ability to adapt built into one of her subroutines? A question for another time, Brenna thought.

  “Duly noted, Flick.”

  Brenna checked the numbers she had input into the probe and launched it.

  “Fly, little probe, fly,” she said and watched the exhaust trail until it was lost in the dark background of space.

  She nodded and rubbed her hands together, content to be doing something about her predicament. Even if it was only something so small as to figure out where the damned Veil was.

  “How’s that scan coming?”

  “Still processing.”

  “Keep me updated.”

  “Of course.”

  “And after you complete that—” Her train of thought was obliterated. “What the hell is that?”

  Outside her craft, what could only be described as a giant tentacled creature floated by through the vacuum of space.

  Not floating precisely, but more like swimming, she corrected herself.

  The creature’s tentacles undulated behind it, propelling it through the empty void as though it were swimming through the depths of an ocean.

  Brenna’s blood ran cold. Her eyes grew wide, her fingers digging into her control panel. Was this thing real? She wondered if she had breathed too much of the pure oxygen but cast that thought aside as quickly as it had come.

  The thing floating—swimming—past outside was like some
thing from one of the stories she’d read as a youth, about impossible otherworldly horrors that shattered the human mind.

  But Brenna’s mind wasn’t shattered at all. Now that the initial shock had worn off, her mind raced, cataloging every detail of the creature that she could see. About a half a mile in diameter, give or take, its rubbery-looking flesh was a dark gray hue with an almost liquid appearance. Small puffs of ejecta emitted from various parts of its body, the largest coming from the buccal mass where the tentacles met.

  That must be how it propels itself, Brenna thought.

  “Flick…”

  “Recording already, Agent Locke.”

  “That’s a good girl,” Brenna said. Her fingers ached, and she realized she was still white-knuckling the control panel. She released it and flexed her hands, shaking the pain and numbness away.

  “This is incredible,” she said, giddy at the idea of making possible first contact with a species no one in the Coalition had even dreamt of.

  The creature turned toward the Rapier and stopped, floating in the inky void several kilometers in front of the vessel. The space around the creature blurred, looking akin to the haziness of overheated concrete, pulsed out and enveloped the ship. The comforting thrum of the engines died; the cabin’s lights went out. The Rapier was dead in space.

  Brenna’s elation and wonder turned to dread.

  “What the hell?” she said. “Flick, you with me?”

  Nothing.

  “Of course not.” Brenna tapped on her control panel, trying to will some signs of life out of the vessel, but to no avail. “Two hundred and four CPU cores and you ain’t worth a damn when it matters.”

  A bright white light projected from the octopus-like creature’s mantle and pierced the darkness of the void.

  Brenna squinted and held up one hand to shield her eyes from the blinding light. Even then it was almost too much for her ocular system to handle. Pain pierced her skull.

  And then it hit her. She wasn’t under attack, not at all.

  This creature was scanning her ship.

  This realization, however cold it might be, comforted her somewhat. At least she wasn’t going to die. Not yet, anyway.

  And then it happened.

  Brenna’s already stressed mind was filled with images of alien worlds and equally alien species.

  Giant golden pyramidal structures in the middle of a desert, crawling with tripodal creatures, dark almost obsidian-colored skin, no body hair to be seen, and large eyes that were mostly pupil.

  A massive crystalline tower, reaching into the heavens, almost too big to comprehend, like something out of a fairy story from her childhood.

  Androids, or something related. Their eyes emitted a dark glow. Terrible mechanical beings that appeared exactly as they were: cold and heartless.

  Brenna’s eyelids fluttered. The cascade of images faded from her mind.

  “What the living hell was that?” she asked aloud, breathless.

  Her heart hammered in her chest. A line of cold sweat rolled down her spine. She shivered at the almost ticklish sensation. It was only then that she noticed that the Rapier was no longer being bathed in the light of the alien being.

  When she blinked, she still had the afterimage behind her eyelids.

  “What the hell is going on? Flick?”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to clear her mind. She opened her eyes just in time to see the alien turn and move off. It floated away from her.

  The Rapier’s power returned as suddenly as it had gone out. The sounds of the rebooting systems startled Brenna, and she let out a small squeal of surprise.

  She shook her head at that. She hadn’t squealed at anything since she was a teenager; when a large insect had dropped onto her bare stomach while she sunned herself on a rock by a lake. And now, forty years and countless dangers later, she sounded like that young girl.

  “Pathetic,” she said.

  Brenna checked the instruments, and everything seemed to be in working order, as if nothing had happened.

  “Flick, are you back online?”

  “Yes, Agent Locke.”

  “I don’t suppose you got any of that?”

  “Any of what?”

  “Didn’t think so,” Brenna said, her eyes following the retreating alien life-form.

  She sat bolt upright and stared forward. A wormhole opened up in front of the creature, and it slipped inside.

  “Ping the probe, Flick.”

  “Pinging.” Flick paused. “It’s still in search mode.”

  “Damnit.” She tapped a finger on the control panel and watched as the creature’s tentacles began to disappear inside the wormhole. “Right. Let’s go.”

  “Go where, Agent Locke?”

  “We’re following that big bastard into the wormhole—it leads somewhere, and I don’t want to stick around here, waiting to become a snack for something bigger.”

  “I would advise against that, Agent. There’s no telling where it might lead or what might be on the other side.”

  “Exactly.” Brenna smiled a crooked smile. “Where’s your sense of adventure? Besides, we’re currently nowhere, and our resources will continue to run down. Better we follow this thing and hope to find some kind of civilization.”

  “Adventure is not in my programming.”

  “More’s the pity.”

  There was something else that Brenna didn’t share with Flick for fear of triggering a psych report: there was something about that whole experience that told her she should follow. Perhaps it was the body language of the alien entity, or perhaps it was related to the imagery it had put into her brain, but those didn’t seem like acts of aggression.

  Brenna brought her engines up to full power and engaged them, chewing up the distance to the wormhole at a rapid pace.

  She noticed a red flash on the control panel. The sensors picked up another ship directly behind the Rapier and following at the same speed.

  “Flick, give me visuals and magnify the image,” Brenna said.

  “On your screen.”

  “It’s a ship, all right,” Brenna said, squinting at the screen. It was hard to make out, as if it was partially cloaked, but to Brenna, it looked like some kind of bird.

  “Nothing I can do about it now,” she said.

  She took a deep breath, steeled her nerves as best as she could, and tossed out a prayer to any deity that might be roaming that part of space.

  The Rapier plunged into the wormhole. And the black ship followed.

  Chapter 3

  KAI WATCHED the holoscreen as the three Host fighters approached on an attack vector, their needlelike noses aimed directly at the Blackstar.

  In his head, he pictured their approach and placed their positions into a three-dimensional matrix so that he could spot a route of defense.

  This was an ability familiar to him, but he assumed was also part of his cache of information he couldn’t quite fully activate. He remembered having similar experiences during his ship-racing days, and it always proved helpful in tight situations.

  “Awaiting your orders, kid,” Bandar prompted.

  “Right,” Kai said, giving a curt nod. “I’ll pilot, Bandar. Senaya, you’re on weapons.”

  “What about the AI?” Senaya asked.

  “No AI. We’re doing this the old-fashioned way.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t trust it yet, Sen. I trust you, however.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Marella said.

  “Be our eyes and ears for anything odd out there.”

  “Will do.”

  “By the way, Bandar? Let’s cut the kid crap, all right? Call me by my name or nothing at all,” Kai said.

  Bandar dropped a level look at him and then nodded. “Roger that. How are we running this, Kai?”

  “You control the port arrays, and Sen will control the starboard.”

  “Sounds good to me
.”

  Kai’s fingers flew across his control panel. The armrests and restraints enveloped the crew. Next, he brought up the shields. A light flashed on the holocube, indicating the shields were functioning, but it was redundant, as the whine through the hull told them the same thing. He was starting to bond with the ship now, getting to know it like the body of a loved one.

  “Two kilometers out and closing,” Marella said. Kai continued to watch the oncoming Host Arrow fighters. The ship’s systems indicated they were less than thirty seconds away from their firing range.

  “What are they doing?” he said. The three Arrows changed formation, lining up tail-to-nose.

  “Setting us up for an easy shot,” Senaya said.

  “I don’t think so,” Bandar said.

  “They’re smarter than that,” Marella added, leaning in to get a good look at the video display on the wall of the ship’s bridge.

  Kai counted down the seconds.

  “Get ready. As soon as the Arrows are remotely in range, I want full power through the weapons array on the lead ship,” Kai added.

  Ten seconds. Five seconds.

  “Now!” Kai ordered.

  Bandar and Senaya each unleashed a volley from their respective particle rearrangement cannons, but at the last possible instant the Arrows broke their single-file formation and spun off in three different directions.

  “Miss!” Senaya called out. “Son of a…”

  The Arrows flashed by on three sides, unloading on the Blackstar with their lasers. A flash outside showed that the shields easily absorbed the attack. The holoscreen showed the fighters turning and coming back around for another run.

  “Damn, those things can shift,” Kai said, thinking what he would have done to have had one of those in his ship-racing days.

  He engaged thrusters and began guiding the Blackstar through the debris field of the previous battle.

  “Risky move,” Bandar said. “There could still be live ordnance in here.”

  “No ‘could’ about it; there’s definitely live ordnance out here,” Kai said as the shields absorbed another round of laser fire.

  A thought struck Kai. He turned to Marella.

  “Scan for any weapons floating around out there. Missiles, bombs, whatever,” he said.