Void Star (4 page)

     Kaida had a time table to meet, but didn't think this was the moment to bring it up. "Um…back there, I heard that alarm. Was that really a rift?"

     "Yes."

     "Did you see a Ruveran ship?"

     Nathan was about to answer, "No," but was cut off.

     "They're coming!" The brown-robed alien had opened his eyes wide the moment the word
Ruveran
was spoken. He pulled off his oxygen mask and flailed, attempting to escape his seat. "We must go! We must hurry!" Then he fell back unconscious.

     Nathan watched the figure and then asked Kaida, "What was that?"

     "It's probably the last thing on his mind before he went under."

     Without hesitating, Nathan pulled out the wake-salt package and opened it under the alien's nose. The stranger awoke instantly. He looked around wildly.

     "Where am I? What's going on?" The alien went into a terrible bout of coughing. It was hard to tell whether the Nymarian's voice was always whispery or if it was because of the injuries it had sustained. "I must find the chosen one. Where is the one?"

     Nathan had to hold him down to calm him. "You're safe. What happened to your ship?"

     “Dosh?”  The stranger looked around, still uncomprehending. He clutched his chest. For the first time he appeared to take in his actual surroundings and then Nathan.  "We…we were running from a Ruveran battleship. It was trying to capture us." His words came out with great difficulty and a slight wheeze.

     "There was no indication of any other ship in the sector."

     The Nymarian nodded weakly. "They are out there. We were hit, but my pilots managed to hyper-jump. We were going to land on the nearest planet to figure out what to do next." The alien squinted as though rehearing something he'd forgotten. "I heard over the radio that another Ruveran battleship was inbound to destroy Aquaria, but we were already falling through the sky.  Two battleships…" The Nymarian pulled at his abdomen and closed his eyes in pain. "I remember crashing."

     Two
Ruveran battleships?

     The intercom beeped on. "Uncle, sensors are going haywire. I think it's a Ruveran probe."

     The captain pressed on the intercom panel. "Have Boost take it out."

     "Roger."

     Nathan gave the alien a once-over. He didn't look like anything the Ruverans would be interested in. "Why are they after you?"

     "For what I know." He pulled out a computer pad from his robes. Another bout of coughing brought bright-yellow liquid to his lips. "Oh no…I'm dying," the alien said weakly. "I can feel myself slipping."

     "I'm sorry. There is little we can do." Nathan searched the Nymarian's face. "What's your name?"

     "Cleph'thera."

     "Cleph, why were the Ruverans after you?" Nathan repeated.

     The Nymarian searched the captain's face for a moment, considering. Then he pulled the captain down and whispered something in his ear. Without an answer, Nathan cleared his throat. Kaida had never seen such a strong man look so surprised—or afraid. The moment passed and then the old captain was back to his stony-faced self. The alien's data pad disappeared into the captain's coat.

     "Do you give your word?" the Nymarian asked.

     "On my honor," Nathan answered.

     "The responsibility falls to you now. Please give me my last rites." Cleph went into another string of coughing. The yellow discharge turned dull green. Clutching his heart, the alien took his last breath. Then his body went slack.

     Nathan drew himself up. Death never got any easier to watch. He looked to Daphkalian, the large, well-muscled man. "We have containers in the cargo hold for remains. Can you take care of him?"

     Daphkalian nodded darkly. He picked up the frail alien and walked him out to the back.

     "Please have a seat, ma'am," Nathan said, trying to maintain an appearance of professionalism in dire circumstances.

     Kaida took her seat and buckled herself in.

     Nathan slowly made it back to the front of his ship, a sinking feeling spreading through his veins. He paused outside the cockpit for a moment to gather his wits. The alien's words echoed in his mind.

     He had never imagined something worse than the Ruveran Empire. He exhaled, straightened his jacket, and walked up the stairs.

     "What are you doing?" Trevor yelled back at him.

     Nathan left the top step and jumped back into his seat. "What is it?"

     "Did you forget Ruveran protocol?" Trevor seethed with frustration. "Boost shot down the probe, but that'll only indicate we're actually here."

      Ignoring Trev's persistent attempts to engage him, Nathan remained calm. "What systems are around here?" He took the ship's controls in his hands and throttled up. He performed a one-eighty before they got caught in the asteroid belt. Open space spread out before them.

     "Nothing of note. Aquaria was the only station for light years around so close to the Outer Rim." Trevor looked to his uncle to make sure he understood that things weren't okay. He saw instead something familiar in his demeanor that he didn't like. "Wait. Did that Nymarian die?"

     Nathan didn't say a word. He didn't have to.

     "Well, c'mon, let's get out of here before—"

     Nathan looked down at the radar screen between them. On it, he saw that two Ruveran battleships had jumped out of hyperspace. Both were on an intercept course, bearing down on them.

Chapter 3

     The
Wrath
sat helpless as the Ruveran battleships closed the gap. Stretching from one side of their viewing screen to the other, the Breakers stood, like monoliths at a full stop. They stared their ship down as though they were hungry leviathans that had stumbled upon a weary traveler. Now their only escape was the field of asteroids slamming into each other at their backs.

     Having trailed through hundreds of solar systems, spaceports, life-sustaining moon worlds, and the like, Nathan and Trevor had never seen a Breaker in person. They had been built after the destruction of their world, and what they saw was much more than they had heard.

     One Breaker was the length of a continent. Its width and height were the size of the ancient state of Texas. They were mostly rectangular in shape; some angles appeared cylindrical, due to slightly rounded corners. Somewhere near the bottom rested the most dangerous weapon in the universe, the planet-destroying rift cannon.

     "What are they waiting for?" Trevor asked. He expected the fighter ports to burst open and overwhelm them or some supercannon to blast them into oblivion. Instead, they waited.

     "I don't know." Nathan was just as confused and uneasy. There was no comfort in a situation one didn't understand and had no training for.

     Button 6 was blinking on their radios. Nathan hit it and opened the common frequency.

     A woman’s voice came over the radio spoken with a thick Ruveran accent. "We have your vitals and know who you are. If you enter the docking bay voluntarily, we will let you go on your way after we have the alien you retrieved. Until then, your force drive has been disabled."

     Trevor did have to admit the offer seemed reasonable for Ruvera, even if it was true. But for some reason, trusting the very empire that had destroyed one's planet didn't come easily.

     "Where are we? Do we have an out?" Nathan asked. He fiddled with the force drive trying to get something out of it, but the Ruverans were telling the truth. They had disabled it.

     Trevor smiled. His uncle had fought the hardest against the Ruverans in the fight for Earth and would never let them dictate the terms of any agreement, no matter how dire the situation. Trev brought up the star map for the sector and scanned for anything that could aid them. The only plausible route at the moment was through the asteroid belt.

     "
Breaker IX
, this is Commander Jeggas," the radio crackled. The man sounded angry. "We have your data on those people on board. The rift of Aquaria removed a secret base of the enemies of the empire. According to your systems, we have identified an additional agent that escaped the event. Our orders are to terminate everyone on board."

     Nathan and Trevor exchanged confused looks. Were they talking about one of them? They had been careful for the last eight years since Earth's destruction. What Aquarian secret base?

     "
Breaker VI
, this is Commander Argum, we have our order to capture and detain an alien as part of an unrelated mission. It is clear we must sort this out. Stand down until we—" She droned on.

     "What are they fighting about? Are they after the same person?"

     "No," Nathan answered plainly and then added. "Screw this." He punched off the radio. "What do we got?"

     Trevor pointed to the energy ribbon beyond the belt. "The Endari Ribbon runs through this system." But he wasn't sure how it could help them.

     "We'd be torn apart by it," Nathan grumbled, though it was an option and they didn't have many others. The stream of energy could be used for separation, but it was an unpredictable mass of energy that ran across the universe. The width fluctuated, but on average, it was larger than most suns. It was an event in space pilots actively avoided. No one actually flew into it.

     "Your answer?" the woman broadcast.

     Nathan disengaged autopilot, throttled up, and pulled the controls down into a 180-degree turn. The ship entered the asteroid belt.

     "That was mistake," the perturbed male commander came again. Thousands of little red blips appeared on the radar as the battleship released its fleet.

     Trevor punched out a load of countermissiles. The little projectiles stayed in formation as they reached their intended targets. When the enemy fighters shot them down, the trick ejecta set off an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP. The front batch of fighters went offline.

     The
Wrath
tore through the cosmic dust first. Gray pebbles flicked across the view screen. Temporarily blinded by the chalk, Nathan relied on his terrain-detection screen. He barrel-rolled around the first boulder.

     Never taking his eyes from the viewers, Nathan guided the ship down and around the great space rocks.

     Their pursuers gave chase.

     "Boost, buy us five minutes," Nathan barked.

     "Aye, Captain." Boost had crawled up to the cockpit at some point. His little robotic figure popped from his seat and ran through the ship. He climbed back up to the defensive turret. The bionic creature brought the laser sights up and aimed at the offensive volley ripping toward them. Laser fire tore through the sky behind them as Boost went at it.

     Nathan continued to dodge the floating stones—up, over, around, and then through a hollow one. When Trevor stole a glance over and saw his uncle's expression, he could have sworn he was enjoying this. Chunks of moons clashed all around them as they passed by.

     Then they hit the outer wall running between the two moons. It was blocked in all directions.

     Nathan pulled up his mic. "Forward, Boost. Forward!"

     The screen erupted with green laser fire. The larger asteroid before them exploded into harmless chunks. Boost kept on them.

     Trevor glanced at the radar and saw the little fighters had disengaged and were going the long way to reengage them when they came through. They were somewhere outside the radius of the moons.

     "Uncle."

     "I know."

     A batch of massive rocks spun before them, threatening to smash their ship. The oblong asteroids reached for them. Nathan throttled forward just as they all connected.

     They both held a collective breath.

     The
Wrath
shot through. They had cleared the asteroid belt.

     "The force drive is still offline." Trevor kept trying to reset it, but whatever the Ruverans had done to it continued to prevent it from firing up. Without light-speed travel, they were just killing time until the inevitable.

     Outside the belt, Nathan pushed his ship to its highest threshold speed. He flew around another moon and put a massive red gas planet between them and their enemy.

     The radio crackled again with a deep, commanding voice, "Jeggas, do not destroy that ship. We have orders."

     The answer crackled back, "Argum, your radio is coming in broken and unreadable."

     The fighters were back on them and firing. From Boost's position, he saw a good two thousand ships chasing them. It was like an angry nest of ants coming to kill their queen.

     The Endari Ribbon grew in their viewport.

     Nathan could hear Boost getting off as many shots as he could from the back. The radar was filled with little blips coming around at them. They now appeared as a mass of color instead of individual crafts. Nathan continued to juke and spin his ship away from them.

     "Electromagnetic pulse detected," the computer announced.

     Nathan reacted out of instinct and hit the emergency shutdown. All their electronics went offline. The powerless craft continued flying forward without systems.

     The pulse burst out, and the subsequent shock wave blew past them.

     Nathan hit the quick start and fired the ship's systems back up. All the screens and lights blinked back on. This wasn't the first time someone had tried to EMP him.

     They were almost on top of the ribbon. It stretched its energy toward them, flicking its lightning fingers out to destroy them. Drenched in sweat, they saw the dangerous space phenomenon reach out to take them in.

     "Are we really doing this?" Trevor called over.

     "We don't have a choice." Nathan pushed the controls down, and they went at it.

     "Here we go!" Trev called over PA. "Brace yourselves."

     Downstairs, Kaida looked over at Daphkalian. Neither of them had any idea what was going on.