Far From Home: The Complete Series (56 page)

I’d be a King of the shadows,
he thought to himself with satisfaction.

That, he’d decided, was the best way to be. And there was the matter of the Union and its territories.

Once he knew how to control the master monolith, Carn would use it to travel back in time and space. For the pyramid could achieve both. From what he’d learned, there were no limits to its power, once you knew how to wield it. The pyramid would take him back to the Draxx home world a century or so before the humans launched their ship into the cosmos – which had been the very beginnings of the Union. Preceding those baby steps into space, he would launch an attack against Earth itself. Wipe them all out. Perhaps incinerate the Earth’s surface with every weapon he could muster.

Stamp them from history.

There would be no Earth. No Terran Union. Nothing to stand in their way. The Draxx had once been described as a kind of cancer, attacking star systems on its way toward expanding across the entire galaxy. Now it would do more than that. The Dominion would invade several star systems at once, taking them by force in grand sweeps. Within fifty years, he estimated, the Draxx Dominion would rule half of the galaxy.

And I’ll live to see it happen,
he told himself.
Thankfully, the ravages of time don’t wear down on me like they do the humans.

There had been many attempts by different parties at guessing just what the General was. At trying to imagine what he looked like behind the mask.

As the old saying went, the truth will always be far stranger. If only those who’d tried to guess who and what he was over the years could have known.

They’d have never believed it. Especially how he had come to be that way . . .

One of the bridge crew approached. “General, we are approaching the planet now. Do you authorize us to drop from Jump and activate our defences?”

He nodded once, slowly. “Yes. Observe extreme prejudice. Take no prisoners.”

8.

“I recommend slowing to one quarter speed,” Greene said from his station. “We’re coming up on some kind of asteroid field.”

King got up to look at his readouts. The field stretched like a vast barrier, cutting right across their path.

“Is it navigable?”

“Yeah, but we’ll have to take it slow. And there’s something else…”

He changed views to show thermal energy scans. Many of the asteroids showed what could only be the thermal exhausts of small outposts hidden within their recesses. Even when separated by entire galaxies, Jessica could recognise a defensive perimeter when she saw one.

“Gun turrets.”

Greene nodded. “Aye.”

She turned to Hawk. “Cut the engines to one quarter or less. Close all exhaust ports. We need to be a shadow, nothing more.”

“Working on it,” Hawk said.

“I just hope Praror’s ship doesn’t spark any kind of alarm,” King said.

“It shouldn’t do,” Greene said.

“Shall we make brief contact?” Dolarhyde asked her.

She shook her head. “No. Let’s stick with the plan. Front it out. Commander Greene, how long until the asteroid field?”

“Four minutes,” he said.

She clipped herself in. “Everyone buckle up. Hawk, take it easy in there.”

“Subtlety’s my middle name,” Hawk said.

* * *

The
Warrior
swung out of the way of massive boulders, ducked beneath smaller rocks that spiralled toward them on a collision course. And all the while, probing the entire area with wide sensor beams, the Naxor outposts watched for any sign of trespassers. Fortunately, the
Warrior
was not detected.

Captain Praror’s ship was, though it merely registered as just another Naxor ship on its way back from deep space operations. It was uncommon, but not unusual, for Naxor ships to traverse the asteroid field.

After several hours of sometimes hair-raising flying, Hawk took them out of the field and back into clear, obstacle-free space.

“Thank the gods for that,” Greene said.

“Yuh didn’t trust me, kid?” Hawk asked, setting the
Warrior
back to automatic control for a while.

Greene let loose a big sigh. “I just hate rocks.”

“Unless they’re under scotch,” Jessica said.

“What I wouldn’t do for one of those right now . . .” Greene said.

Jessica unclipped herself. “When we get back, Commander. And if we pull this off, there’ll be more than one.”

“I think –” Greene started to say, before his station let loose a series of warning sounds. He looked down and his eyes widened in surprise. “Enemy vessel, dead ahead!”

Jessica spun around in time to see a huge Naxor ship rush upon them.

“Evasive! Get us out of the way!”

Hawk dived back into his chair, threw the controls to manual and steered them out of the other ship’s path. It ploughed through the spot they’d vacated only seconds before, oblivious to their presence. The ship was massive, like a floating city powered by immense engines. Captain Praror’s ship also ducked out of their way, passing beneath them either undetected or ignored. What was one little friendly ship, headed for home, after all?

“Rear view,” Jessica said.

The viewscreen changed to show the departing ship.

“Biggest I’ve seen yet,” Hawk said.

“Size of that thing, Commander?”

Greene swallowed as he made sense of his readings. “Over twenty thousand metres long. Ten thousand metres wide,” he said in awe.

“Things just got real,” Hawk said.

Jessica looked from one to the other. “Continue as we were,” she said.

Then she left for the engineering section.

9.

“I don’t even know what half this stuff is, let alone what it’s capable of,” Chief Gunn said as they had a look around the hold.

“Work with Captain Dolarhyde, try and get a sense of what we can use and what’s a definite no no,” King said.

“Well, Belcher can hold the fort in there while I do that, sure,” Gunn said. “This is to do with that big ship we passed, isn’t it?”

King nodded. “I just want us to be prepared, Chief. If we come up against something like that, we won’t last two minutes. I need us to be able to pack a punch.”

Gunn regarded her.

“No, not just a punch,” Jessica said, “a locomotive.”

The Chief grinned. “Tell Dolarhyde to get his old Robinson Crusoe behind down here and I’ll see what we can rustle up . . .”

* * *

Men – and women – headed into a battle of some kind often observe a kind of routine. Whether it’s two parents going to war in a courtroom for custody of their child, two duelling shootists in the Old West, or a hero of the Terran Union, headed for a possible confrontation with his arch-nemesis.

There are behaviours that precede the trouble to come. Hawk’s own ritual, when he found himself with the luxury of time to do it, was to clean and oil his kataan. The blade had seen a lot of action but there was not one knick on its cutting edge. The hardened alloy from which it had been forged had proven, so far, entirely impervious to anything it was subjected to.

He rubbed an oiled cloth up and down its length, in an almost mesmerised manner.

“I’ve never seen you do that before,” Commander Greene said as he walked into the little mess hall. He made himself a coffee and sat at the table opposite.

“I do, from time to time,” Hawk said. “Yuh see, I don’t usually get any warnin’ we’re headed for trouble.”

“True,” Greene admitted.

“Besides, I get the feelin’ this one’s a kind of… how d’yuh say? A final stand?”

“Yeah, I get you,” Greene said. “I think if we don’t stop him now, we never will. He’ll unlock everything he wants to know about and it’ll be like we never existed.”

Hawk looked up as that sunk in between the two men, then went back to his care of the sword. “A universe with no Hawk in it… can yuh imagine that, fella?”

The Commander couldn’t help but chuckle. “It’s unthinkable.”

“Yuh know, I don’t think there’d be a big bang without yours truly there to light the match…”

Greene shook his head. He watched as Hawk inspected his weapon, looking appreciatively down its edges, all of them perfectly straight. The whole blade sparkled with a high shine, as if it were brand new.

“You’re really expecting a fight with Carn, aren’t you?”

Hawk’s face was set. “Yep.”

“I take it you think the General’s also looking forward to a rematch…”

Hawk smiled. “Del, my boy, I’d bet the farm on it.”

10.

“You are to locate a pyramid built of black material on the planet’s surface. Notify me when you do,” Carn ordered.

The officer nodded compliance and scurried off to do his bidding. Carn watched as two ships approached from orbit to intercept.

“Enemies to starboard,” a crewman announced.

“Target and destroy,” the General ordered, barely interested or concerned by the threat of two light cruisers. Not with what he had loaded aboard. A moment later, the awesome firepower of the battleship struck the two ships and tore them to pieces. They erupted into balls of flame and debris.

“Enemy vessels eliminated,” came the feedback from the helm.

Carn nodded.
This is how it is meant to be
, he thought.
With such a ship as this at my disposal, nothing can stand in my way
. What had the High Vizar called the cannon fitted to the ship? The Crusher?

An apt name.

“Excellent,” Carn said. “Use the weapon against all who oppose us.”

11.

Up on the bridge by herself, while Hawk grabbed some much needed down time, Jessica couldn’t help but look around. She could almost imagine she was on the
Defiant
again. Back on her old ship, her Father’s command.

But it wasn’t the same. The
Warrior
was smaller, and her bridge layout too dissimilar for the illusion to hold and give any comfort.

I feel alone,
she thought.
I feel like I’m on a solo mission. Following a crazy old man on a quest to find an ancient alien artefact that… what? Controls time?

But Dolarhyde had proven to them that the pyramids could be used for just that. And it had confirmed the general consensus that if Carn could manipulate time, his first order of business would be to ensure the Draxx were the dominant race. Not just back home, in their own galaxy – but everywhere.

No way,
she told herself.
And I’m not alone. The best of them are with me, putting their lives on the line too. We’ll do this together, as a family. We’ll set everything right.

There was a beeping noise from one of the nearby consoles. Jessica snapped out of her reverie and located the source of the incessant beep.

The ship’s sensors showed a planetary system fast approaching. She hit the comm. panel, broadcasting her voice to every inch of the
Warrior
.

“All hands to your stations. We’re here.”

12.

“Full stop,” Hawk reported from the helm.

A huge battleship stood over the planet like an upturned city with a cluster of engines glowing white hot at the back of it to push its mass through space.

“Is that the same ship from before?” King asked.

“No. Looks like a sister ship. Same design, slightly different signature,” Greene said.

“I’m receiving old-style binary code from Captain Praror,” Dolarhyde announced. “He’s asking what you want him to do.”

“Well . . .” Jessica said. She looked on the viewscreen as the Naxor ship engaged an entire fleet of alien fighters, blasting them into smithereens with lances of energy from its weapons.

“I’m detecting a developed culture down there,” Greene said. “It’ll take a while to track down the pyramid amongst all that interference. And then there’s the problem of getting to it, if whatever species that is down there is guarding it.”

“We’ll come to that when we come to it,” King said. “Just track the artefact down.”

“Aye.”

“So the General’s found it,” Hawk said. “And old mirror face is tryin’ to take it by force.”

“Would he do it any other way?” King asked him.

“True,” Hawk said.

King took in a deep breath and held it before letting go, in an attempt to still her nerves and remain cool headed about the situation. She watched from their relatively safe distance as the floating city of a ship turned broadside to confront a trio of cruisers headed straight for it from the planet’s surface. They exchanged blows and the battleship stopped abruptly. The alien ships must have thought they’d done some damage, because they swooped in with everything they had. Then the battleship fired at them with great crackling beams of pure energy that burned through them as if they were made of butter. Moments later the three ships were left to tumble, powerless, back toward the planet from which they’d come.

We need to decide what we’re doing
, King thought.
Before they spot Praror’s ship just sitting here and question it. And before they fire that weapon at us. Whatever that was…

“Captain Dolarhyde, contact Praror and ask him to move in. Slowly. Buy me some time,” Jessica said.

Dolarhyde nodded and executed her order without a word.

“What’s the thinkin’, Cap?” Hawk asked.

Commander Greene looked up. “Got it. Outside one of their major cities, in an area of dense vegetation and foliage. Jungle. No sign of protection.”

“It’s a temple. A religious site. They no doubt worship at the foot of it,” she said. “But no resistance to us means no resistance to Carn. At least, not until it’s all too late. Keep it locked in, and monitor for any Naxor forces making their way toward it.”

She turned back to Hawk.

“My plan is to reveal us at the last minute,” she said. “And then hit him with weaponry he’s never seen before.”

The legendary Captain grinned from ear to ear and turned back to the helm controls. “Takin’ us in. With pleasure.”