D'Mok Revival 1: Awakening (15 page)

“But they kidnapped the professor!” Toriko bellowed.

Mencari took a long breath and forced a smile. “And Toriko had a professor that helped expose the Nukari, who has been captured and taken off-world. But our raid managed to disrupt their operation, at least temporarily. Seems that Toriko managed to delete a large section of their computer core and made the rest of the server publically accessible as a parting shot.”

“Good luck hiding now!” Toriko said triumphantly.

Osuto could hear tension building in Mencari’s voice. “It looks like you were able to get away,” Osuto said.

Mencari nodded. “We’ve left the planet and are on our way. Should be arriving shortly. We’re okay. Thanks to the resistance and her sister, Toriko and I have a lot of intel we didn’t have before, about Bansa and this Jencho character who’s in charge there.”

Osuto looked over at Seigie and smiled. “Well, hurry back. We still have a lot of work ahead. Oh, and welcome, Tor-ee-ko.”

Toriko pushed Mencari aside so she could get into the image. She grinned and chirped, “Thanks! I really appreciate this opportunity. I won’t let you down!”

Osuto tried to stifle his surprise at the big fox ears and red tufts of cheek fur, the odd-looking cartoon fox drawn on her dirty white t-shirt, the nearly indecipherable “XoXo” printed underneath.

Seeing Osuto’s expression, Mencari added quickly, “I’ll tell you more when we’re back.”

A dog barked in the background behind Mencari, and Toriko vanished from the image. A second later, Osuto heard her voice, this time in baby talk, saying, “Who’s a good boy! Yes you are! Who’s a good—?”

The communication closed.

Osuto turned to Seigie. “She’s bringing a
pet
? Just what kind of person
has
he hired?”

“Rhysus?”

The gentle voice beckoned from the dark, and he felt a kiss on his cheek as the voice repeated his name, this time pleading. Something warm wrapped around him and began constricting his body. As he fought for air, the woman screamed his name.

Mencari lurched forward from slumber. Beads of sweat flung themselves from his forehead. The burn of adrenaline flooded his body, making his breathing labored. He found his lower body tangled in sheets, unable to move. He touched his jaw, still feeling the gentle lips.

With a sigh, he said, “Lights . . . thirty percent.”

The room glowed faintly and Mencari pushed away the covers. Forcing himself from the bed, he stumbled toward the bathroom, eyes probing every shadow for the woman, despite the impossible.

Damned dreams.

As he entered the bathroom, he gazed into the mirror and grunted. The partial light gave his skin a sickly color. At least he hoped it was just the lighting. He ran the water and splashed a bit on his face. In the mirror, the wedding band on his finger drew his attention. Then his resolve crumpled, and a broken whimper escaped, then, “Anaka.”

He couldn’t allow this. Not today. Not one more day. Weary and somewhat puffy, yet defiant eyes met his gaze in the mirror. Anaka would have chided him without mercy, scolding that he looked like an old man when he got like this. Yes, he was tired. But sleep didn’t make things any better.

When he stumbled back to bed, sleep was merciful and this time held no dreams. At least none he could remember.

* * * * *

“Morning,” Mencari mustered entering the control room, where he found a giddy Toriko talking with Osuto. Spark greeted him with a happy yip. The robot dog’s master was so entranced by her conversation, she didn’t see Mencari come in.

“Uh, no,” he groaned. “You’re a morning morning person.”

She continued on, still unaware of Mencari. “. . . and all we need is a few components to hook it up, Osuto!”

Mencari spoke again. “Hook what up, Toriko?”

She finally noticed him. “You’re up!”

Osuto gave him a benevolent smile and a wink. “Good morning, Rhysus. Toriko’s been working since three this morning.”

She gave both of them a toss of her glittery red-and-black hair. “I couldn’t sleep. Something woke me up, and my mind got working on this . . . and I figured, ‘Just get up!’ So I did.”

Mencari walked over and looked at the device in her hand. “What is it?”

“Remember how there were Nukari back on Aeun? Well, I ran some tests on the flight-recorder data captured by the ship, and discovered a few interesting particles in the flight paths around the world.”

“And?”

“
And
I was able to put this together,” she said as a projection of Auen appeared with multiple arcs leading to the planet’s surface. “See?”

Mencari glanced at Osuto, who threw his hands up and said, “I don’t know. She was just telling me when you came in.”

Mencari nodded and looked back at her. “Lines?”

She nodded emphatically. “Not just lines,
emissions
. And look where one leads!”

He looked, but shrugged, not recognizing the significance.

“Here,” she said pointing. “Where the Nukari pod was! I thought maybe it’s a trace particle from their engines. So, I checked with Maro, and after some collaboration, it looks like it is!”

“But wouldn’t we already have to be in their proximity to detect it, and be useful?” he asked.

Dumbfounded, she looked toward Osuto, then back to Mencari. “It’s pretty simple. If we get a few parts, I can hook this into the station’s sensor grid. Sure it’ll have a limited perimeter, but we’ll be able to scan for any Nukari activity from here. Um . . . or at least, any drives that use a similar technology.”

Mencari was intrigued. “
That
could be useful. I developed something that could detect them when they were phased. But I left that behind with the Coalition. Even so—once the Nukari knew we could detect their phased ships, they found other tactics to get around us, like using mercenaries or other races as transports and scouts. How far will we be able to scan with that thing?”

“Um. Well . . .” Her eyes skittered back and forth as she thought. “I could put together a few relay nodes . . . to widen the scanning fields. But I’ll need more parts.”

“Patching through relay nodes? Ingenious,” Osuto said.

Toriko looked at him with serious eyes. “Thanks, but . . . it’ll take time. And I couldn’t be one-hundred-percent certain until I tested at least one node with the base scanner.”

“So what do you need?” Mencari asked.

“Osuto said there’s an old ship graveyard not far from here. Thought I could start there. But there are a few things I’m sure I won’t find there.” She began making selections on a new piece of hardware strapped to her arm and projected a list of components.

Mencari glanced over the list and chuckled. “Technology’s moved on while I was cooped up at the Coalition research facility. But I think I recognize most of these things. I’ll have to go back to the trading post and see what I can find. Hopefully we can afford all of it.”

While I’m there, maybe I can find out how much Eyani’s creature detector helped our treasury,
Mencari thought.

A memory stick popped out near Toriko’s display. She pulled it from the slot and handed it to him. “This has the list.” Then she returned to tweaking the new scanner.

“Keep me posted every step of your trip,” Osuto said to him. “Especially after what happened on your last journey. In the meantime, I have more training to do with Toriko and Seigie. But according to our young genius here,” he gave Toriko a warm smile, “we already have enhanced our distance scanning capabilities. If the Nukari show up, I’ll contact you.”

“Seigie still doing okay?” Mencari inquired.

“In her own way, she’s as single-minded as Toriko is,” Osuto said, grinning. “I’ve never seen anyone so interested in making crystals grow. Considering her . . . difficulty, you’d think that would be the last thing she’d want to do. Nonetheless, I’ve pretty much given her the okay to follow her own lead.”

Osuto followed Mencari to the door, saying quietly, “And Rhysus . . . remember what we talked about.” Rhysus had mentioned Toriko’s tale of seeing energy no one else could, among her other unique traits of commutating with robots, and other things he had observed while on Tericn. Osuto glanced over to Toriko, then back to Mencari. “You were right—active D’mok abilities. I’ll try to get her to understand her gifts as rapidly as I can.”

Mencari nodded, pleased to feel the presence of another D’mok-skilled individual. “I’ll be back as fast as I can,” he said. “Then, we’ll talk about what’s next.”

* * * * *

“I’m just docking now.” Mencari let go of the controls, allowing the piloting system to take over while he looked at the holographic projection of Osuto’s for details. The quick trip to the Trading Post had gone well. “Why?”

Osuto continued, “We picked up a distress signal from a ship not far from here. It’s being attacked by mercenaries.”

As the ship approached the asteroid’s moorings, the forward display showed Toriko fumble into the bay, headed his way. Her arms were overflowing with parts and tools. Mencari couldn’t believe how fast she was moving, especially without dropping something. He tensed as Spark bounded playfully around her feet, expecting her to crash at any moment.

The instant the ship stopped moving, Toriko opened the rear airlock and jumped in. Mencari stared at her and the armload of tools she carried, amused. “I could use your help to unload the ship, Toriko, not pack more in.”

But she’d already popped open a service panel and dove inside. She called out as she worked, “We’re gonna go help!”

Mencari said, “Help? Who?”

Osuto replied, “Ujaku. He’s the one being attacked.”

“Who’s being attacked?” Mencari said. “And how are we supposed to help? This ship doesn’t even have any weapons.”

Her voice came out of the open panel. “We do now. I’m just about done.”

Osuto voice interjected, “Toriko, tell Mencari about Ujaku.”

She pulled her body from the panel, along with a handful of wires and thumb-sized circuit boards. Her face was flushed and her mouth twisted in an embarrassed smile. “Well . . . I know him pretty well. My father used to trade with him.”

Spark yipped happily. Toriko stared down at her lively creation.

“Back to your recharging bed… Go on!” she said, as Spark pawed at the air, then obediently ran out of the ship.

Using her foot, she hit the button to close the hatch. “Guess that would help. Sorry, we should go!”

She momentarily dove back into the console.

Mencari said, “What are you doing?”

“Installing an enhancement modeled after one of Spark’s devices. An EM pulse generator. Hope the power source is strong enough. I looked up the schematics for this ship. Should just minimally drain the system. I think. But I’ll watch the gauges. If it does too much, I’ll adjust it.”

“Sending the coordinates to the nav system, Toriko,” Osuto said. “There’s no time to waste.”

“Just about ready with the new weapons, Osuto,” Toriko replied.

Mencari shook his head. “So, what are we getting ourselves into here?” he said. “If you two don’t mind filling me in.” With a sigh, he activated the undocking sequence.

Osuto remotely activated a side display. “You can see Ujaku’s ship has been damaged and is being pursued by two mercenary ships.”

Mencari’s ship began its familiar jostling as it moved from the dock into free space. Its frame groaned slightly.

A loud hammering panged through the ship. Alarmed, Mencari spun around to see Toriko emerge from the panel with a grin. “That last pin just needed a little encouragement,” she said, tool proudly in hand. “It’s in now.” She saw concern shadow his face and laughed. “It’s gonna work. Well, it
should
, anyway!”

He turned back to the controls as she strapped herself in. The engines roared to life.

Osuto said, “Good luck!” and his holographic image faded.

“There has to be more to this story,” Mencari said. “Why is this Ujaku fellow worth a tussle with mercenaries?”

She tinkered with a small panel next to her. “I’ve locked on to his signal. He’s still transmitting. Should we send him a message?”

Mencari sighed. “Let’s get farther from the base.”

“Okay.”

He heard the hesitation and saw her worried face. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. Let’s just get there.”

He was tempted to challenge her again. Thankfully, she elaborated on her own.

“He’s not much older than me, but he and my father were really close. I saw him a lot growing up. My dad invented all kinds of things. Dad used to get materials and sometimes custom parts from Ujaku. And… Me too…”

“Like father like daughter, huh,” he said.

“A lot of tools in my workroom back home were built by Ujaku.” She nibbled on her lip as she played with console controls. “I didn’t have much time to pull together a decent tactical system, so we’ll just be able to target one ship at a time with the EM pulse. Most of them have a radial area-of-effect. This one’s a little more . . . directed. Only thing is we’ll have to manually target the enemy.”

Mencari winced. “Manually?” He leaned his head against the headrest. “I seem to remember you saying something about all of your equipment being top-notch.”

“It is! I mean, sure, I had to cobble this new combat system together from spare parts… And I coded the entire system minutes before you docked. And I guess that didn’t leave any time for testing, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to work!” She flashed him a dimpled smile. “Even if it works half as well as it’s supposed to, it will get the job done.”

“For your friend’s sake, I certainly hope so.” Mencari closed his eyes. “So, how does our new super-weapon work?”

“A button press.” She said face scrunching.

“Now that you mention it,” she pressed a button on her armguard, saying, “NEW WORKSPACE.” As she spoke, a holographic screen with scrolling readouts appeared before her. “While I have a little time, maybe I can put together a tracking and auto-fire system too. Sure, I know what you’re going to say. It’s another new system that builds on an another untested system, but we don’t have the time for a lot of testing—”

She began working with her virtual workspace, ignoring his wince.

A tone rang from the dashboard.

“We’re far enough away from the base,” he said. “Toriko . . . you can contact your friend now.”

She hopped to the communication station. Her hands blurred across the consoles as she hailed Ujaku. A few minutes passed with no response.

“Maybe his comm’s damaged?” Mencari said.

“But I’m still picking up the distress signal.” In spite of her bubbly tone, worry was still on her face when she returned to her seat.

Suddenly, a projection of a haggard young man with a scraggly  red beard appeared before her.