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

  Brenna nodded and followed the emissary through the entrance.

  They proceeded down a darkened corridor, passing several other doorways. She counted her steps as a precaution. One never knew if a chance to escape would present itself and she needed to know the way out.

  They continued, turning right and left from time to time, and the emissary stopped. He tapped a code into a keypad and pushed open a door and stepped inside. Brenna followed. He stopped again at the end of a short hallway and pushed open a door made up of steel bars. He held his arm out again.

  Brenna knew he wouldn’t be entering this one, so she stepped through and turned to face him, accepting her place within the cell.

  He closed the door, locking her inside.

  “Brenna Locke of the Coalition, you are hereby charged with breaking Patari law,” he clicked at her. “In the morning you will stand trial before our magistrate.”

  “Now, wait just a minute,” she said.

  “Rest now.” With that, it turned and left the cell block. The main door slammed shut behind him, and she was alone in the dark.

  Brenna grasped the bars and leaned her forehead against a crossbar.

  And the memories came.

  Not long before she had been in a different cell in a different part of the universe. She had answered a distress call that turned out to be a trap. Captured, she had awakened on a Host ship and learned from a fellow captive—a GTU agent named Lutes—that she was to be interrogated by one of the shrain. The clones liked to fight dirty and soon brought in her husband, Kendal, though he turned out to only be a very lifelike hologram.

  Her fingers tightened around the bars of her cell door as she was flooded with fury at the memory. To use Kendal against her like that was low. And the worst part?

  She almost fell for it.

  Almost.

  A shudder racked her body at the idea of not being in control, of those bastards drugging her and locking her up like a common criminal. She smiled a grim smile at the sounds of her boot stomping down over and over on her captor’s face.

  She shook herself free of the memory. It wouldn’t do her much good dwelling on it now. She looked around her cell. Not much to see, really. What must have been a lavatory sat in one corner with a cot in the other. No cellmate, however.

  Not this time.

  She sat down to wait and try to formulate some semblance of an escape plan.

  Which was when she heard muffled shuffling noises coming from the cell adjacent to hers.

  Chapter 6

  FOR THE FIRST time in quite a while, Kai felt that he was in some semblance of control. He had his own ship—he finally started thinking of it as his, at any rate—a good crew, and a plan. As soon as Senaya fixed the power converter, they could be off to find his mother.

  “Kai, you better get your ass back here,” Bandar’s voice boomed from the Blackstar’s speakers. “Now.”

  Kai sighed, ran his hands through his hair, and shared a quick glance with Marella.

  “I’ll be right there,” Kai said. He heaved a great sigh and stood up from the command couch. “Marella, could you keep looking through those ship files, see what else you can find?”

  “Okay, I can do that,” Marella said.

  Kai ran from the bridge, bounced off a doorway, and continued down the hallway to the airlock. He skidded to a halt when he saw what was waiting for him.

  “Bandar, what the hell is going on?” Kai asked.

  “Put on a suit,” Bandar said. “Senaya came untethered from the hull. She’s just floating around out there.”

  “What?” Kai felt his heart speed up; hot adrenaline shot into his belly. His vision blurred momentarily.

  “Stop asking stupid questions, Kai.” Bandar finished, snapping the last of the suit’s straps into place.

  “Why doesn’t she just use the thrusters built into the suit?”

  “These are old suits,” Bandar said. “They don’t have thrusters.”

  Kai cursed and pulled up a video feed from outside the Blackstar. He gasped in horror. His oldest friend was free-floating through space about a hundred meters from the ship. He considered just flying the ship out to her, but she was surrounded by too much debris. She flinched as a headless body bumped into her and floated by.

  Kai grabbed Bandar’s arm. “We can’t just go hurling ourselves out the airlock. There’s a better way that won’t risk all three of us.”

  “You better be quick about it!” He shrugged Kai’s arm off.

  “We need to get a tether out to her,” Kai said, sweat pooling in his suit.

  “She’s too far out. We need something else, like a harpoon. Have you seen anything like that lying around the ship?”

  “What? No, I haven’t seen so much as a fishing pole.”

  “Well, we’re gonna have to figure something out and fast.”

  “Could we tie a line around one of us and, I don’t know, jump out towards her?”

  “Sure, Kai. And after about a thousand tries it might just work.” He shook his head and continued prepping his suit.

  Kai’s breath stopped in his throat as an idea struck him. He took a few seconds to work out the logistics and smiled.

  “We don’t have a harpoon,” Kai said. “But I might know where there’s a pole.”

  “Well, don’t just stand around here, go get it!”

  Kai nodded once and took off down the hallway towards the living quarters. He went into Senaya’s room and started rifling through what little belongings she had with her. He found what he was looking for and snatched it up.

  Seconds later he was thrusting a rifle into Bandar’s outstretched hand.

  “And what exactly are we supposed to do with this?” Bandar asked.

  “We need to get the barrel off.” They walked into the airlock and Kai began to put on a spacesuit.

  “Well, that should be easy enough, this gun is a piece of shit.” With that said, Bandar held the gun by the barrel and slammed the butt onto the floor. He repeated the maneuver once, twice, three times. With a metallic crack, the gun was in two pieces, and Bandar held the barrel up with a tight grin on his face. “See?”

  “How does your flame blaster work?” Kai asked.

  “I squeeze the trigger. It shoots out flame.”

  “Come on, Bandar, you know what I mean.”

  “It’s a liquid-based propellant that…” Bandar nodded his head, his smile growing even tighter. “Yeah, that might just work.”

  “Well, get working on putting it together while I get this damn suit on.”

  Kai struggled into his spacesuit while Bandar went to work jury-rigging a harpoon gun. He bashed one end of the attached rifle barrel so it would fit inside the barrel of his own flame blaster, and with a little tweak here and there, it slid home with a click.

  “How’s it coming, Bandar?”

  “Just about done.” He attached the end of a tether to the sight on the end of the barrel.

  Kai clicked his space helmet into place, annoyed at the momentary fog on the inside visor. It cleared just in time to see Bandar finish the final touches to the impromptu harpoon, and he thought to himself that this just might work.

  “I turned off the accelerant, the oxygen canister is full, and we are ready to rock ’n roll,” Bandar said.

  “Good, let’s get this going,” Kai said. He reached over to a pad on the wall and closed the inner hatch, securing the interior of the Blackstar from the vacuum of space. With a start, he realized that Senaya had no idea what they were doing. He flipped on his helmet mic.

  “… wanna die out here,” Senaya’s voice said through the helmet speakers, her voice shrill.

  “Senaya, you are not going to die.”

  “Kai? Where the hell have you been?” Her voice was at least an octave higher up the register than normal.

  “Calm down, Senaya. We’re gonna take care of you,” Bandar said.

  “Don’t tell me to calm down, Bandar,” she screamed back at him.
“You calm down, you’re not the one out here heading for a shit ton of debris and ordnance.”

  “Senaya, we’re going to shoot a tether out to you. When you see it, grab it and hold on tight.” Kai wished he felt as confident as he sounded, but his pulse was pounding in his ears, and his vision had been reduced to a single point.

  “Hurry, Kai, please.”

  Both men were surprised at the fragile tone of her normally ebullient voice. They shared a look and knew that she wasn’t going to be able to hold it together much longer.

  “Okay, Bandar, give me the gun and open the door,” Kai said.

  Bandar shook his head in the negative. “No way,” Bandar said. “If someone is going to take the shot, that someone is me.”

  “Okay.” Kai heard in that tone that Bandar would brook no argument. And he did have much more firearms experience, so it made all the sense in the world.

  “Grab on to me, Kai. We don’t need two of us floating around out there.”

  “Yeah, all right.” Kai grabbed hold of one of the straps on Bandar’s spacesuit and secured himself against the wall next to the airlock door. He took one quick deep breath and opened the door.

  “All right, Sen,” Bandar said, taking a proper shooting stance and aiming his gun out the airlock. “Get ready, we’re probably only gonna get one chance at this.”

  “Just do it already,” Senaya bellowed.

  Bandar smiled his grim little smile. “Here it comes,” he said and squeezed the trigger.

  The makeshift harpoon exploded out of the barrel of his flame blaster in a puff of discharged oxygen and rocketed towards Senaya.

  In Kai’s mind, everything seemed to happen way too slow. It seemed to take hours for the tether to travel the distance between the ship and their shipmate. She reached out with both hands, and the harpoon passed directly between them.

  His stomach knotted. he thought he was going to vomit inside his space helmet, but then he heard Senaya whoop with delight as she closed her hands around the tether.

  “I got it,” she said. “Hit me right in the face, but I got it!”

  “Holy shit, Bandar, great shot!” Kai said, slapping the big man on the back.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty impressive,” Bandar said. “Now quit beating on me and help me pull her in here.”

  “Of course.”

  As they pulled Senaya back to the safety of the ship, their helmet speakers were filled with her thanks and prayers and not a small amount of cursing.

  Finally, she was inside the airlock and Kai reached to close the outer door, but something caught his attention.

  His hand froze above the button.

  Off in the distance, a massive creature was moving through space. It was a deep almost jet black and floated gracefully as its tentacle-like appendages swayed with its movement.

  Kai stared at it in gape-jawed wonder.

  A wormhole opened several hundred yards in front of the beast. It flew into it, never slowing down for an instant. But just before the wormhole collapsed on itself, a small metal object escaped the vortex and floated harmlessly on its way.

  “Close the damn door already,” Bandar said.

  “Did you see that?” He tried to look over his shoulder, but the helmet prevented the motion.

  “See what?” Bandar asked.

  “Never mind, it’s gone now.” If it was even really there, he didn’t add. He hit the button, and the airlock door closed. Immediately the small room filled with oxygen.

  They removed their spacesuits and stepped out of the airlock into the comforting confines of the Blackstar.

  “Senaya, thank all the gods!” he heard Marella say from behind him, her voice almost breathless. “I was so damned scared. I was going crazy.”

  Kai closed the inner door, and when he turned around, Senaya’s arms were wrapped around his neck. She clutched onto him desperately and was whispering thanks, her entire body trembling.

  “Don’t do that again,” Kai said. He held her at arm’s length. “I thought I’d lost you.”

  “I thought you’d lost me, too,” Senaya said. There was a little trembling in her voice.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Kai said.

  “I don’t either,” Senaya replied. She gave him a big smile, which he returned.

  And then she bent at the waist and vomited all over the floor.

  THEY ALL SAT on the command couch, and Kai filled them in on the creature he’d seen. As with himself, no one else had either seen or heard of anything like it. Not even in myth. If it was, in fact, real, it was entirely unique to anyone from the Coalition.

  Kai pulled up the sensors on his control panel.

  “Right before that wormhole collapsed, something came out of it,” he said. His fingers tapped across the panel. “I want to find out what that was.”

  Within seconds he had his answer.

  “It’s a probe from the Rapier,” he told the others and sat back on his couch. “My mother’s ship.” A lightning strike flew up his spine. She was here, close…

  “We should probably retrieve it instead of just lounging around, don’t you think?” Bandar said, a slight teasing note in his voice.

  “That would probably be a good idea,” Kai said.

  “Is the probe dead?” Marella asked.

  “Not according to the sensor read,” Kai said.

  “Then we should be able to take control of it via remote and dock it with the Blackstar,” Senaya said. They were the first words she’d spoken since she got sick.

  “Okay, let’s give that a shot.”

  Kai went back to work on his control panel, and soon the probe came back to life and flew in their direction.

  It was much easier to recover the probe than it was to save Senaya. They had it on board and hooked into a computer module in short order.

  “According to the probe sensors, we have a new set of coordinates,” Marella said, “that might just lead us to your mother, Kai.”

  “Okay. Let’s plug them into the Blackstar’s star chart and see what we will,” Kai replied.

  After a few moments, Marella had the answer.

  “According to the Blackstar database, these coordinates are in the middle of a system controlled by a race called the Patari,” Marella said, looking up from her control panel. “Apparently, they don’t really like Navigators all that much.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Bandar asked.

  “Where is it in relation to my father’s possible location?” Kai asked.

  “In totally opposite directions,” Marella said and shrugged. “As far as there are directions in space.”

  “Maybe the Blackstar can tell us more,” Senaya said.

  Kai didn’t want to depend on the arrogant AI but felt that in this instance he had no choice. He tapped in the override code to wake the program up.

  “Blackstar, what can you tell me about these coordinates where my father might be?”

  “Nothing at all, Kai Locke. That is uncharted space.”

  “Well, thanks for nothing,” Kai said.

  “I apologize, but I can only give you information that was programmed into my memory modules.”

  “Blackstar, do you know anything about the giant octopus thing that Kai saw?” Senaya asked.

  “I am sorry, Senaya, but I have no information on that either.”

  “Aren’t you just a big old bundle of help,” Bandar said, chomping on a cigar butt.

  “Forgive me, but—”

  “Enough,” Kai interrupted. He looked around at his crewmates, his friends, his eyebrows raised in question. “I propose we go in search of my mother, Brenna. We need to find out if she is still alive. That should be priority number one. Unless anyone has any pressing arguments for something else?”

  “Makes sense to me,” Bandar said. “Kendal probably isn’t going anywhere anyway.”

  The rest agreed, and Kai put the coordinates for the Patari system into the nav computer.

&nb
sp; “Kai Locke, the journey to the Patari system will take just under one standard day at full thrust,” the AI said.

  “Why? According to the charts, it shouldn’t be that far away.”

  “The gravity drive is not working,” the AI said.

  “What are you talking about?” Senaya asked. “We just fixed it.”

  “Yes, Senaya, but the detritus that hit my hull and cut you free also damaged the power converters once more.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Senaya said, exasperated. “I don’t know if I can go out there again.”

  “You won’t have to,” Kai said. “There’s no telling how badly damaged the converter is, and I don’t want to risk another spacewalk. Besides, we could all use a little rest.”

  They all nodded in agreement, even Bandar, who never seemed to get tired at all.

  “Buckle in, everyone,” Kai said. He made some adjustments on his control panel. “Next stop, the Patari system.”

  Chapter 7

  RISING to a strange noise in an unfamiliar place would not head the list of Brenna’s top ten ways to wake up. She opened her eyes at the sound and leaped out of bed, immediately sliding into one of the nineteen defensive positions that she’d learned over the years. She blinked her eyes wildly at the sunlight streaming through the windows of her cell.

  And then she remembered where she was.

  The rustling of clothes came from the cell directly opposite hers. She remembered hearing the same sound the night before. It seemed as though someone, or something, over there was still alive.

  “Hello over there,” Brenna said. There was no reply. She sighed with frustration. “I said hello over there. Are you awake? Are you alive?”

  She let the tension drain from her muscles and walked to the door. She peered through the bars of the other cell door. A shadowy form huddled in the shadows, hiding any detail that would identify them.

  “Can you hear me? There’s no sense for you not to talk to me, we’re both here together.”

  Her frustration built toward anger. Instead of slamming her palms against the bars, which was her first instinct, she took a deep breath and stepped away from the door. She crouched in the middle of the cell and stretched her muscles, trying to loosen the knots caused by stress and a night spent on an uncomfortable cot.