He fired directly at the head of a rapidly-charging Serapin leader. At ten feet out, the beast momentarily staggered, then leapt towards Jason. As if in slow motion, Jason saw the approaching jaws gap open before his eyes. He saw bits of chewed meat clinging between jagged rows of pointed teeth as the creatures six-inch long canines thrust forward, like two razor-sharp spears—pointing and angled towards his own jugular—and drool that streamed and whipped back and forth into the air. No doubt, Jason was looking into the jaws of death itself.
Swung two-handed like a baseball bat, Traveler’s intervening heavy hammer connected at the side of the Serapin’s head, right at the hinge point of its upper and lower jaws. The cumulative force behind Traveler’s powerful swing and the weight of the heavy hammer’s blow caused the Serapin’s jaws to hyper-extend open far wider than nature ever intended. Bone splintered, flesh and muscle ripped, as his now disconnected upper and lower jaws flew off in separate directions. Jason stared, momentarily frozen, at the headless beast before him. Even before the Serapin fell to the ground, Traveler was gone and engaged with another Serapin. When two new Serapins charged him, Jason hoped he’d selected the most powerful level for his multi-gun. Apparently it was the rail-gun setting mode with explosive rounds. Both Serapins charged single file, one in front of the other. Jason squeezed the trigger. Both Serapins lost their heads simultaneously and fell to the ground. For the first time, Jason had a moment to assess the situation. The rhino warriors were still holding their outer circle. Four of them had been killed, with their partial remains scattered about, making it difficult to determine which arm or leg had gone with what torso. Another rhino-beast, also dead, was being dragged off into the desert by two Serapins. Two SEALs were dead and another one down and being attended to by Dira. The remaining SEALs quickly figured out their multi-gun settings, and that changed the tide of the battle. Within seconds, the rest of the Serapins scampered off. Again, Jason turned back and took in the carnage. Where was Ricket? Jason let out a sigh of relief, spying Ricket’s active icon on his HUD. But he still couldn’t see him anywhere.
“I am here, Captain,” Jason heard over his comms, “above you, here in the cliffs.” Jason spun around and saw the small robot-cyborg thirty yards away, halfway up the side of a ragged cliff line. “What the hell are you doing up there?” Jason asked, his anger helping to hide his relief at discovering Ricket was still among the living.
“Captain, this man requires time in a MediPod,” Dira said. Jason knelt down next to Billy and Dira and the fallen SEAL. She had attended to his left shoulder and upper arm; blood had saturated his field dressing and he’d lost consciousness.
“I’ll take them back,” Morgan volunteered.
Reluctantly, Jason nodded, not wanting to break up his already fractured team. “You better get going then. Ricket will tell you how to gain access back into
The Lilly
.”
“Never mind, Captain,” Dira said. “Petty Officer Dolan has expired,” she informed as she reassembled her med kit.
“What do you want us to do with the bodies, Captain?” asked Billy, who stood and surveyed the remains of the fallen SEALs and rhino warriors. “I don’t think we can bury them deep enough—the Serapins will get to them.”
“I have an idea,” Jason said. “Where’s that damn Ricket?”
Within ten minutes, eight bodies, both of rhino warriors and SEALs, lay side by side on the ground, body parts reassembled on a best-guess basis and secured together using straps from their own packs. Meaningful words were spoken by Traveler for the fallen rhino warriors, and by Jason for the fallen SEALs. A long silence followed. When the time was right, Jason nodded for Ricket to start. Beginning with the first body, the largest of the deceased rhino warriors, Ricket knelt down, accessed the rhino’s wristband, and within several seconds the body disappeared. One by one, Ricket activated each dead body’s phase-shift device until all had disappeared. Dira, sharp rock in her hand and standing before a flattened area of the rock cliff, finished inscribing each of their names. She stood back and assessed her work. As if on cue, the remaining twelve assault team members looked up to the rocky cliff where two hundred feet into solid rock, eight bodies would remain undisturbed in their final resting place.
“We need to secure a suitable campsite for tonight. We’re losing daylight. Grab your packs and be ready to move out in three minutes,” Jason commanded.
In three minutes the team headed off towards quadrant 2. Jason led, with Ricket beside him. “Captain, I believe I have found a suitable camp location for tonight,” Ricket said, looking up at Jason. Not getting an answer, Ricket continued: “That rock spire—the tallest one—half a mile ahead.”
“When did you have time to investigate potential campsites?” Jason asked, his voice not hiding his irritation.
“I’m uncomfortable around violence. When the Serapins attacked I—”
Jason stopped and looked down with contempt. “You what? Abandoned your fellow crewmembers? You hid while others died fighting?” Jason yelled.
The remaining SEALs and rhino warriors had caught up and formed a semicircle around the two of them. Ricket stared up at Jason, seemingly tongue-tied.
“Let me make something perfectly clear to you, any of you—I don’t care who you are—an emperor, or the fucking Queen of Sheba, in battle or otherwise—you don’t leave your post—you don’t leave your team. I need to know you’d gladly lay down your own life protecting the warrior standing next to you. Next time that happens, any of you, I’ll shoot you myself!”
They headed off again in the same direction. No one spoke for a long time. Then Ricket broke the silence.
“I apologize, Captain,” Ricket said. “It won’t happen again.”
“Tell me about your campsite.”
“Yes, sir. I hadn’t used all five phase-shifts when everyone else had. I looked for locations that would not be easily accessible by the Serapins, or anyone else. I determined that the outcropping or spire on the side of that distant cliff is inaccessible from above or below.”
Jason adjusted the optical zoom on his HUD. Midway up a sheer, thousand-foot-high ridge was indeed a protruding ledge jutting out from the cliff face.
“Water is available as well as shelter from the elements. It requires two phase-shifts: one to the base of the spire and one up to the ledge.”
“How do you know it’s safe?”
“Other than insects and rodent-sized creatures, I detected no other life forms,” Ricket replied.
“Alright, let’s get up there. Go ahead and give everyone the phase-shift coordinates.”
Chapter 11
“You’re getting warmer, Mollie. You’re definitely going in the right direction.”
“When I said I wanted you to be harder on me, I didn’t mean this hard,” Mollie replied. She hadn’t previously ventured above Deck 4. With the other Decks you entered and left the DeckPorts through various corridors. But here, on Deck 5, she entered a large room remote unto itself. The first thing she noticed as she left the DeckPort was the muted lighting and soothing background music. Shaped like an oval, with large-cushioned seating around the perimeter, the room was all about the space above. This was the observatory that she had heard other crewmembers talking about. Mollie stood in the middle of the large room with her head back. Thousands of stars streaked by and disappeared as quickly as they appeared.
“Mollie, are you still playing the game?” the AI’s friendly voice asked her.
“Yeah, I guess. This place is so cool.” Mollie brought her attention back to matters at hand. She took several steps forward and squinted her eyes against the darkness.
“You’re getting colder, Mollie.”
Mollie stopped and took a tentative step towards the left bulkhead and then took several steps more.
“You’re getting hotter, Mollie. Scalding hot!”
Mollie had gone as far as she could; the wall and the couch were directly in front of her. She made a face. “Hmm, you’re being pretty tricky, Lilly. Let’s see. There’s nothing in front of me on the wall. Nothing on the couch.” Mollie smiled. “Maybe I’ll look beneath the cushions.” She crouched down, put her fingers in between the cushions, and pulled them apart. There, sitting at the back of the couch beneath one cushion, was a little six-inch square device. “What is that thing?” Mollie asked, now unsure if she should be touching something foreign to her. Lilly didn’t answer. “Hello, are you there, Lilly?”
“Yes, I’m here, Mollie”
“What is that?” she asked again. The soft music played in the background, but silence from the AI.
“Lilly?”
“Yes, Mollie. For you to win this game, you must complete your task, remember?”
“I’m not so sure I should be doing this. Maybe this thing is something important?
“Would I have you do anything that would get you in trouble, Mollie?”
“I don’t think so. No, you wouldn’t.”
“We can’t continue onto the next part of our game until you complete the task—as we outlined when we started.”
“Okay, okay, okay …” Mollie picked up the small device. It was heavier than she thought it would be.
Well, whatever this thing is
, she thought to herself,
it certainly shouldn’t have been left lying around, anyway.
She made another face and looked around the room. As part of the rules of the game Lilly AI had come up with, every time she found one of the hidden items, she was to find the nearest incinerator panel and drop the item inside. At the far end of the room was a small bar, and behind that, a kitchenette. She walked around the counter and looked for the characteristic metallic panel. There were hundreds of those things, little trash ports, all over the ship. “There it is,” she said in a singsong voice. Without another thought, she pushed open the little metal door and let the device fall inside.
“I win.”
* * *
The solemn-looking seaman walked slowly down the corridor. His mind was conflicted.
Why should I be tested?
His own brother, and I have to be tested?
He’d accomplished more than anyone. The simple fact that he was here, a trusted crewmember wandering the corridors without suspicion, should not only be enough to prove his loyalty, but his higher intelligence. He was coming up to the wide hatch for the rear hold area.
I can almost smell them
, he thought to himself. He accessed the keypad and entered the code he’d recently hacked,
too easy.
The overheads lighting was off,
they live like vermin
. The hold, basically empty, was as wide as the ship with access from either side. A haze filled the air, smoky, like airborne soot. He squinted his eyes against the darkness. In the distance a small fire burned. Three silhouetted figures spoke in low tones. There they are,
like little piggies
. His instructions had been explicit. No energy weapons that could be detected, no loud noises either.
The seaman pulled a long slender knife from his sleeve. He was brought up to have one or more hidden weapons upon his person at all times. He’d seen others in his clan pay the ultimate price for not being prepared. Hell, his own uncle had been gutted while taking a crap—lesson learned the hard way.
He stepped out of the darkness. Flames of the small fire illuminated half of his face.
“Fires are not allowed onboard this ship,” he said
Glenn looked up and saw the knife. “They sent you.”
“I’m afraid so,” he replied. As awkward and unskilled in the art of killing as the young seaman was, the three elderly Craing overlords were no match. Their throats cut, each died watching their lifeblood spread across the deck plating.
Chapter 12
Jason was the first to arrive at the rock outcropping. Easily three hundred feet in diameter, he’d shifted to an open clearing close to the middle of the site. He was unprepared for the untouched natural beauty of the place. Behind him the sheer rock face continued up another five hundred feet to the top of the cliff. A waterfall fell into an azure pool, causing a mist to rise and eventually dissipate in the warm air above. Looking straight out, away from the cliff face, Jason saw a small forest of trees—several precariously angled out over the far edge of the rocky ledge. Rizzo was the next to appear; then, one by one, everyone else arrived.
The rhino warriors spent little time goggling over their new surroundings, preferring to get right to work preparing the campsite. Multiple tent-like enclosures, called Retractable Camp Modules, or RCMs, unfolded from small, paperback book-sized contraptions in mere seconds. A fire was built and soon shish-kabob skewers were sizzling over the open fire. Traveler had informed Jason that rhino warriors required much nourishment, primarily meat—and they needed to eat often. They’d brought along provisions but had made it clear they would hunt and eat from the land itself in HAB 12. Subsequently, four of the rhino warriors had arrived from below carrying expertly butchered Serapin carcasses. The meat was carved and prepared with spices and rubs that they’d brought with them.
Jason could not imagine a more secure site. Just the same, he would not be taken off-guard again. With the exception of Dira and Ricket, a revolving sentry duty of two rhino-beasts and two SEALs was instigated. As darkness fell over the camp, the team took up seats, mostly tree stumps and rocks, around the fire. The rhino-beasts shared their Serapin kabobs and, to Jason’s surprise, the meat was succulent and full of flavor. Sitting next to Billy, who tore chunks of meat off with his teeth, a phrase came to mind—
to be consumed by his conquerors.
Rizzo broke the silence. “Hey, Cap, any chance we can hit that pool before we head out tomorrow?” he asked, looking over to Billy to see if he too was open to the prospect.
Jason looked over at Billy; the smoke from his cigar hung in the still night air.
“Only if we make it quick. We’ll take a few minutes in the morning, but then we have to double-time it to make up for time lost. Truth is, we could probably all use a bath.”
On the other side of the fire, Dira and Morgan sat shoulder-to-shoulder deep in conversation. Jason had purposely avoided any eye contact with her, still embarrassed from his early morning scrutiny. What was he thinking, anyway? If Alliance regulations were anything like those of the Navy, there were strict rules about fraternization between officers and NCOs. His schoolboy crush would need to stay just that: a crush—and a secret one at that. Looking away from Dira, Jason saw Billy staring at him. He smiled and shook his head.
Shit.