Voyage of the Sanguine Shadow 1: Shadow Galactic (10 page)

“Living at risk is jumping
off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.” – Ray Bradbury

The
Sanguine Shadow
arrived near Ixion Prime, where it moved into geostationary orbit.  The first
victim of Behemothylax’s interplanetary creative rampage, the planet’s surface
had been remade in crystal formations and fractal seas, coastlines, and lakes. 
From space, when the storms were quiet, the planet shone brightly under its
yellow sun, a chaotic ruin of titanic ferns, peacock feathers and spiral
galaxies strewn across its broken surface.  Presently, a thick mantle of clouds
obscured the ground, but where there were breaks, jagged oceans and glittering
blue and purple landforms could be seen.

“I'm picking up a small freighter-class starship
west of the crash site,” the woman at the scanning station reported, “but I’m
getting a lot of false positives because of a nearby electrical storm.  Our
scanners are having trouble locking on it.”  She glanced up to Zerki.  “Sorry,
Captain.”

Zerki smiled slightly and said, “No need to be. 
They’re counting on that storm to keep us from tracking them, staying under the
clouds to pounce on us when we land.”  Easing into her chair, its leather
creaked quietly as she leaned back, and she seated her chin on her palm.  “I
mean… it’s right
there
.  There’s got to be a way.”

“We could ram them,” D’Arro offered.  “The
Shadow
’s
a lot bigger than they are.”

“They'll have ship-to-ships,” Collins assured him,
“knock us out of the sky long before we get close enough to ram.”

D’Arro countered, “Not likely.  Union military’s
got a standing order to shoot-on-sight any civilian starship that’s packing
weapons during peace time.  No merc group in a hundred systems would be stupid
enough to install ship-to-ships.”

Zerki chewed absently on her lower lip.  “We can’t
take the chance, and I don’t want to damage the
Shadow
if it can be
avoided.”  She leaned forward.  “Lodoxol hand-picked these guys, and he really
wants us dead.  There’s a good chance they’re paramilitary.”  She slowly shook
her head.  “No, we need to outsmart them, outmaneuver them.”  Her gaze drifted
over her bridge crew.  “Wait.  Actually, I have an idea.”

Collins gave her his full attention.  “Let’s hear
it.”

“We’ll use transponder decoys.”

“They’ll see it coming.”

Zerki shook her head.  “They won’t see this
coming.”  She drew a deep breath and shared the details of her plan.  Everyone
present listened intently.  When Zerki was done, Krane nodded approvingly and
Collins dryly laughed.

“I’d rather ram them,” D’Arro muttered.

Zerki chuckled.  “That’ll be our Plan B.”  She
leaned over her comm and called for D’Arro’s security team to assemble in the
briefing room.

Gavin said, “Captain, I’ll stay in the rig in case
it goes south.  Say the word, and we can jump back to Afskya at a moment’s
notice.”  He shook his head.  “But if it works, I owe you dinner.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

Collins added, “Course, if it doesn’t work, there
will be explosions.  Namely… ours.”

“It’ll work," Zerki assured him.  “Krane,
I’ll signal you from the briefing room.  When I do, please take us down.”

“On it,” he confirmed.

Zerki stood up and looked to her first mate. 
“Come on, Valerie.  You’re critical in this.”

Her shoulders hunched, and she cast her captain a
doubting stare.  “I don’t feel good about it,” she said, but she nonetheless
followed Zerki to the lift.  They vanished behind its doors, descended to the
middle deck and made their way to the briefing room.  Zerki called up a
holographic map of Behemothylax’s crash site, as the members of D’Arro’s
security team filed in.

After the briefing was concluded, Zerki lingered
and sent notice to Krane.  He switched on the shields, and the
Sanguine
Shadow
began her descent through Ixion Prime’s upper atmosphere.  She
creaked and groaned as she fell.

Valerie approached Taryn and Takeo as they exited
the briefing room.  They were quickly joined by Fogg, Filan, Jenn, and two
more, and they made their way as a group to the command module junction, to the
cargo passageway beyond.  Zerki watched them go and blew into her hands,
rubbing them nervously together.  “Right,” she muttered and made her way to the
aft hangar bay.

“It’s huge in here,” Taryn noted as she descended
the rungs inside the forward, portside cargo bin.  The environment control unit
yawned awake, its heaters humming and whining as old and heavy fans lumbered
into motion.  Bitter cold air slowly warmed.  Dim interior lights flickered on,
strips of pale white that drew attention to the edges of every dingy, goldenrod
loading arm, every bit of black cargo netting, every plastic chair, the
operator’s station and the heavy steel door very far below them.  Gravity had
been weak when they first entered, but it was rapidly gaining ground the closer
the starship got to the planet’s surface.

Jenn climbed down ahead of Taryn and said, “Well,
if you ever end up in here in zero-G, just don’t let go until you reach the
deck.  Trust me.  You go drifting in here, you’ll personally feel just how big
this thing really is.”  She reached the deck and pulled herself along the
netting toward the door, where she set to securing herself.  “Where’s the AI?”

Takeo answered, “Fogg’s probably finishing up with
the other bins.  Jenn, where are you from?”

“Dublin.”  She glanced his way.  “Earth, not New
Falkirk.”

“Gavin was born on Earth, somewhere in California
Free State, but he moved to Afskya when he was five years old, so he doesn’t
remember much.”

Jenn smiled.  “That’s nice.  Aye, there’s a few of
us Earthers out here in the black.”

Takeo stepped carefully, the last in the
procession.  “What’s it like in Dublin?  If you remember.”

“Oh, I remember.”  She smiled wistfully.  “It’s
very green, but I could never do it justice with mere words.  You should visit,
if you get the chance.”

“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”

Taryn reached the deck and set to strapping
herself in.  She grinned nervously.  “This is exciting!”

After a moment of feigned indifference, Jenn
nodded and smiled brighter than she intended.  “Aye, it is.”

“How’d you end up working for the captain?”

Jenn laughed and shook her head.  “It’s a good
story.  Remind me to tell you after.”

Before long, Fogg slipped into the cargo bin as a
tiny flying saucer, and every member of the team secured themselves.  Jenn
reported to the bridge that they were ready.  Moments later, far overhead, a
tremendous crash echoed though the enormous container.  The cargo bin plummeted
toward the surface of the planet.

“First one’s away,” Collins announced from the
bridge.

Tense moments passed as he intently watched the
tactical display, focused on the dot that represented the mercenary starship. 
Several more dots appeared suddenly, timed with several strokes of lightning,
and the mercenaries seemed to jump across the screen.  “Let the second one go.”

“Done,” Krane confirmed, and the boom that
followed resounded through the
Sanguine Shadow
.  Another cargo bin fell
toward the crash site, plunging through the clouds.  “They should be in visual
range.”

“Good,” Collins quietly replied.  “Switch on the
beacons, and ready the third one.”

Alone aboard the cargo shuttle, Zerki exited the
hangar bay, flying out into the cover of the storm.

·· • ··

Derisive laughter made its rounds through the
mercenary starship’s bridge.  A stocky, densely muscled fellow sneered, “Wow,
these guys are amateurs!”  He watched the dinner plate-sized scanner screen,
where it displayed six tagged dots, each claiming to be the
Sanguine Shadow
. 
Clearly visible through their V-shaped canopy, the first cargo bin appeared
from the belly of the storm clouds, leaving a hazy trail in its wake.  Drop
thrusters fired, slowing its descent, and moments later, it settled upon the
quartz-encrusted surface, some distance from the crash site.

A grizzled mountain of a man leaned forward and
growled, “Show some respect.  It’s a salvage hauler, what did you think was
gonna happen?”  The sides of his cheeks bulged as he icily regarded his now
quiet crew.  “Give ‘em some credit.  Decoys aren’t a bad idea.  Too bad they
waited too long to switch ‘em on.”  He studied the screen, watching a seventh
dot as it skimmed the cloud cover.  Its transponder reported it to be an
unnamed transport shuttle.

He smiled a twisted smile.  “That’s the one we’re
after.  That’s the
Sanguine Shadow
,” and he jammed his finger on the
shuttle dot.  Looking to the stocky fellow, he said, “Take the Barret.  We’re
leaving you with the bins.  Shoot anyone that comes out.”

His underling acknowledged, “Yessir.”

The captain nodded toward his pilot.  “Drop him
off a click or two out.”

Their sleek starship had the look of a hawk, its
wings frozen forever on the downbeat.  It was black, completely non-reflective,
with no portholes to be found.  Under the nose, it housed an energy cannon that
spanned half the length of the fuselage.  It dove toward crystalline shores,
paused to hover above the surface just long enough for the stocky fellow to
disembark.

He made his way to a proper sniper’s roost as the
mercenary starship rapidly ascended in pursuit of what it had determined to be
the
Sanguine Shadow
.  A second bin smashed down, coming to rest near the
first.  The stocky fellow hunkered down and propped his sniper blaster on its
bipod.  He peered through the targeting scope.  Scanning the two bins, he
jumped as a third landed thunderously near the first two.  Quickly regaining
himself, he zoomed in on the ground-level bulkhead of the first bin.

·· • ··

Taryn unhitched herself and hurried to the ground
level door.  Slowly, she slid it open.

“Someone’s watching us,” Valerie reported.

The others disengaged from their straps and
harnesses as she closed her eyes, breathing deeply and evenly.  “That way.” 
She pointed beyond the door and opened her eyes.

Taryn moved away from the open door.  She nodded
toward Takeo, prompting him to ready an ellogon blaster rifle.  He hustled
across the deck.  Looking to the ceiling, he nodded and climbed the far wall’s
interior rungs.

Fogg dispersed and raced toward the perched
mercenary.  Upon arriving, Fogg coalesced into a dense sphere and fell to the
ground.  Immediately, Fogg began transmitting video information to Takeo. 

In the skies overhead, the transport shuttle charged
through dark and swollen clouds.  Zerki glanced repeatedly to her scanner
screen, but a series of lightning strikes flooded the display with a dozen
clones of the mercenary starship.  She clenched her teeth and tapped the glass,
holding the flight controls steady.  “Come on,” she hissed, “take the bait.” 
Finally, the false positives vanished, leaving a single starship.  She rolled
the shuttle, doubling back on her own path, and she spotted the mercenaries’
hawkish craft.

On the planet’s surface, a fourth and fifth bin
landed, as the sniper watched the open door.  He startled to see the
Sanguine
Shadow
drop below the cloud line and prepare to land.  Tapping his
microphone, he shouted into it, “Sir, it’s here!  The
Sanguine Shadow
is
here!  It’s getting ready to—”

But he would never finish that last sentence. 
Unseen from the cargo bin’s top hatch, Takeo fired, and the blaster bolt struck
its home, burning a hole straight through the stocky fellow’s head.  Breathing
out, Takeo lowered the gun and began his climb back down.  Grimly, he watched
the
Sanguine Shadow
halt its descent and race once more for the clouds.

The sixth bin crashed down.

“Double back!” roared the mercenary captain.

“Yessir,” answered his pilot.

Crouched behind the door, Takeo joined his squad
mates in firing upon the approaching mercenary starship.  Their stomachs sank
as charged bolts bounced harmlessly off the vessel’s plasma shields.  “Keep
firing!” Jenn urged.  The ends of their blaster barrels heated from red to
yellow, as they held down their triggers.

The sleek starship raced through the air, closing
on the hauler’s enormous bins.  A man at the gunnery station turned off the
shields, whereupon the vessel’s armor handily weathered the hail of blaster
bolts.  He switched on the energy cannon.  “Batteries are charging,” he
reported.  “We’ll be primed in five… four… three…”

The streams of blaster fire abruptly stopped.

“Sir,” said one of his men, “I’m reading six
beacons—five on the ground, but one is coming from directly above us!”

The captain had only enough time to peer up
through the canopy.

Suddenly, the
Sanguine Shadow
dropped from
the sky, and the docking clamps she normally used to secure her cargo bins bore
down on the sleek vessel’s spine.  Mechanical arms gripped and did as they had
done hundreds of times before: they grappled steel and returned to their
housings, tearing the mercenary starship apart in the process.

“Each
nation feels superior to other nations. That breeds patriotism – and wars.” –Dale
Carnegie

It was cool and dim inside
the cargo bin.  Outside, the wind howled and thunder boomed, echoing within the
hold.  Jenn Chelsea rested upon the end of a dormant mechanical arm, as her
fellow teammates sat within the netting and upon the chairs around her.

“It was about three years ago when the captain
found me,” she began.  “I had been an accomplished demolitionist for the
Standing Republic Army, but when it was disbanded my particular skillset wasn’t
opening any doors to a proper career.”  She leaned forward with a wry smile. 
“However, I had garnered the attention of several unsavory types that could’ve
used a thing or two blown up in the name of God and country.  They’re not
famous for taking no for an answer.”

She glanced briefly toward Valerie.  “So there I
am, sitting in the pub, being talked to by a pair of zealous gentlemen when the
good captain steps in and asks if they wouldn’t mind discussing my rates…
outside.  They had the pleasure of meeting D’Arro, I expect, but I can’t say
for certain, as I never saw them again.  When she came back inside, she bought
a round of sipping whiskey for everyone there, and she sat down at my table
with Mister Collins and Miss Valerie.  We shared stories, and when we had all
said our piece, she invited me to give the
Shadow
a try.  She said she
could use a good soldier, that the only things I’d be demolishing would be some
stubborn wreckage and the odd quarry or two.  It seemed like a good match, so I
came aboard.”  She folded her armored hands in her armored lap.  “Haven’t found
any place else that feels so much like home, and I don’t expect I shall.”

Taryn smiled warmly.  “That was a very sweet
story.  Thanks, Jenn.”  From outside, she heard the whine of the cargo
shuttle’s engines as it touched down.  “Our ride’s here.”

Jenn nodded.  “That it is.”  She hopped down from
the loader arm, landing with a sound thump on the deck.  “Let’s not keep the
good captain waiting.”

After they boarded the shuttle, Zerki ferried the
landing team back to the
Sanguine Shadow
.  She docked in the aft hangar
bay, where the combatants shed their armored carapaces, and they made their way
to the lift.  Half the team went on ahead, and Zerki joined the rest as they
stepped inside the elevator.  She tapped the number 3 button, and the lift
glided into motion.

To her surprise, a cheer rang up from the crew as
the doors opened to reveal the crowded observation deck.  Valerie, Taryn, Takeo
and Zerki emerged from the lift, and they shared hugs and laughter with the
rest of their shipmates.  Fogg took the form of a playful mechanical pup.

Someone turned on the lounge’s entertainment center,
and it began playing ambient dance music.

Wearing a contented smile, Zerki looked on as many
of her crew dreamed aloud, their heads filled with visions of wealth.  Takeo
reached out for Filan’s hand.  With an adoring gaze, she took it, and they let
the music guide their movements.  A few others paired off, and many more found
themselves simply dancing to the bass-driven sounds.  Cajun and a few others
left, only to return with trays of water and breads rolls. 

“Sorry,” he laughed, “it’s the best we could do. 
But…”  He reached into his pockets and slowly, dramatically produced two
bottles of scotch.  “There’s my personal stash.”  He held high the amber
spirits, and another round of cheers echoed through the halls.

A bright smile dawned over Zerki’s features, and
she rested against the wall.

“You don’t dance?” Gavin asked, and her cheer gave
way to surprise.

“Sorry, I didn’t see you.”  Her smile returned,
but the glow was gone.  With a shake of her head, she answered, “No, I don’t
dance.  Not anymore.”  She took the cup of water and the roll he offered her. 
“Thanks,” she said and sipped.

He leaned against the wall next to her and crossed
his arms.  “Me neither.”  He considered a moment.  “Unless I’ve had enough to
drink.  Of course, I’m not sure it’s actually called ‘dancing,’ what I do. 
Either way, it’s not pretty.”  Absently, he bobbed his head to the beat.

Zerki chuckled, her smile warm again.  “I’m sure
you’re fine.”

He craned his head around to meet her eyes, his
expression overly dire, and she snickered.  “No, I’m really awful at it.  You
must never put alcohol in my hands when there’s music playing.  I can’t…”  His
mouth froze a moment, and he playfully gripped her shoulders.  “I can’t stress
this enough!”

She laughed and took up his forearms, easing them
away.  “Noted,” she happily replied.

Gavin looked back to the busy room and resumed his
rhythmic head bobbing.

She stepped away.  Drawing a deep breath, she
cupped her hands over her mouth and shouted, “I need your attention!”  The
music quieted, and her crew regarded her.  “I’m giving us thirty minutes of
R&R, but time is not on our side.  We’ve got to start cutting and gathering
as soon as we’re done here, if we want to fill the bins.  Before the day is
out, Lodoxol’s going to realize what happened to his mercenaries, and when he
does, there won’t be a rock we can hide under anywhere in the Ellogon Empire.”

A murmur of confirmations answered her, and she
said with wink, “As you were.  Don’t get too drunk.”

The music resumed at its previous volume, along
with the good cheer of her crew.  She glanced back to the wall and found
Valerie talking with Gavin.  He engaged in some facial buffoonery, choked
himself, and she laughed hard enough to bow forward.  “Good for you, Val,”
Zerki whispered, and she made her way toward the hallway beyond.

From behind her, Gavin called out, “Captain, hold
on a sec!”

She paused and regarded him sidelong.  “What’s
up?”

“I guess I owe you dinner,” he said, and he
smiled.  He saluted and hurried back to Valerie’s side.

Zerki closed her eyes for a moment and laughed
quietly through her nose.  “Right,” she muttered, and she exited the
observation deck.

·· • ··

Hours later, the sun began to set over Ixion
Prime.  After the impromptu celebration had finished, Krane piloted the
Sanguine
Shadow
’s bins to the crash site, and the crew quickly busied themselves
with cutting away everything they could.  They loaded their plunder into the
depths of the bins.  Inside the enormous containers, robotic arms gripped,
sorted and stored everything placed within.

Standing at the edge of the activity, Zerki looked
to Valerie.  “Want to take a look inside the beast before we go?”

“Behemothylax?”

Zerki nodded.

 “I’d love to!  Want to see who else wants to do
some eleventh hour delving?”

“Sure thing.  The more, the merrier.”

Valerie made her rounds, but most of her shipmates
were focused on harvesting.  Before long, she, Zerki, Gavin, Filan and Takeo
regrouped some distance from the salvage site.  They searched for a way to
enter the mountainous corpse of the planet-shaper droid.

“Taryn didn’t want to come?” asked Gavin.

Valerie said, “No, she’s helping D’Arro direct
traffic.”

He crossed his arms.  “Really?  I can’t believe
she wouldn’t want to see this…”

“There!” Filan interjected.  “Oh, sorry.”  She practically
bounced as she pointed to a well hidden hatch some distance from the harvest
site, seated along Behemothylax’s dorsal segmentation.  Impatiently, she
hurried to the passageway and strained against an embedded handle.  It slowly
turned and opened with a hiss of icy fog.

“Good find,” said Zerki, and she stepped close,
hunching down to peer into the guts of the leviathan.  “We’ll need light.” 
With the rip of Velcro, she loosened a pouch cover on her vest and produced a
small disc mounted to a heavy band that had been sewn into its pocket. 
Glancing to Gavin, she added, “You have one too,” and she tapped hers on.  A
brilliant cone of light issued forth.

“Oh,” he muttered and soon had his own torch ready
for use.

Filan offered, “I can go full body, if we need
it.”  Her hands and forearms faintly glowed.

“Good to know,” said Zerki, and she descended
through the hatch.  Her companions followed.

Darkness gnawed at them, shrouded recesses filled
with glinting blades and jagged points.  Carefully, they made their way along
the sub-dorsal service catwalks.  Below them, rows upon immeasurable rows of
devices sagged in immense ropes and stacks, hung indifferently over the scarred
heart of the mountain so very far below.  The silvery blue wash of lighting
danced up along vaults of machinery.

Zerki raised her hand, and the others paused while
she checked her data tablet.  “If these old schematics are still accurate,
we’re heading for the central computer core.”  She looked long at the darkened,
cramped, grime-coated, grated pathways.  “It’ll be tough going, by the look of
it, but it’s possible we could find out why it went haywire, and ultimately why
it just shut itself down.”  An excited smile tugged on her lips.  “We could be
the first people in the entire galaxy to know the truth.  What do you think?”

Filan said, “Ooh, I could access its deep core.” 
She beamed giddily.  “I’m in!”

Takeo, Gavin and Valerie committed to Zerki’s
quest, and they continued onward.

Sunset gave way to twilight, as they threaded slick
byways, silt-coated ladders, stuck hatchways and rusted stairs.  The earth
around them boomed, rattled in the grip of recurrent thunder.  Up ahead, they
spotted a bulkhead labeled “Vital Storage.”  It was dressed in dusty static
warnings and maximum temperature requirements, as well as several power
diagrams.  When they approached, lights embedded in the jamb flickered on, pale
and green, but they dimmed just as quickly.  Automatically, the door slid
aside, revealing a vast chamber before them, and a recorded woman’s voice
chimed, “Welcome to the Reliquary.”

Takeo regarded the captain.  “Reliquary?  That’s
not what’s on the door.”

Gavin mused, “Why would there be a reliquary on a
planet-shaper droid?”

“Yeah, that’s a good question,” said Valerie.

Zerki pondered, and she crossed her arms. 
“Welcome to the Reliquary.”  After a moment, she narrowed her eyes and said, “Maybe
it was never intended to be strictly a planet-shaper.  Maybe it was ultimately
designed to recover lost xeno tech.”

“What was the last world it visited before turning
homicidal?” asked Gavin.

“I don’t know,” Zerki answered, and she faced
him.  “But I think it was in this system, back when Ixion still belonged to the
Union.”

“This was the first inhabited world that got hit,
right?”

“It was.”  She nodded thoughtfully.  “That makes
sense!  Why the ellogons would be holding on to this system so tightly, even
though it’s pretty close to unusable.  If Behemothylax uncovered something
extra special, it’d be worth their time to dig it up, no matter how long it
takes.”

Somewhere in the depths, generators came to life,
giving them all a start.  Overhead, dull thumps rang in sequence, and pale
green, hazy illumination lit up the expansive room.  All around them, display
placards flickered to life, set before scores of crude displays.  Filan pointed
to a pulsing sphere just under their feet, now sheathed in dense, luminescent
gas.  It nearly brushed against the grating.  “What is that thing?” she breathed,
and she squatted down to test whether or not her fingers could fit through the
gaps.

Zerki took Filan’s hand and eased it away,
concluding with an insistent and relieved smile.  “It might be trapped.”

“Right, sorry,” Filan whispered in response.  Her
cheeks and forehead brightened somewhat as she blushed, and for a moment, light
played along her visible circuits.

“Let’s have a look around,” Zerki suggested, and
she straightened.  “Please stay close.”

The others followed their captain to a nearby
display labeled, “Early Explorers.”  She brushed a fine film of dirt from a
section of white-painted metal to make its details more plainly seen, and she
sighed wistfully.  “Do you guys know what this stands for?”  Emblazoned on the
surface were four letters.

“N-A-S-A,” answered Filan.  “No kanji.  It’s probably
an acronym.”

“It is,” Zerki confirmed.  “NASA was one of
Earth’s first space exploration agencies.”  Gavin furrowed his brow and nodded,
while Valerie looked at her expectantly.  “It hasn’t been around for hundreds
of years!”

Takeo asked, “Are you implying that Behemothylax
unearthed an ancient Earth colony this close to the galactic core?”  He
scoffed.  “Impossible!”

“Is it?”  She glanced toward Gavin.

Takeo huffed and nodded.  “Maybe not.”

They resumed their investigation, discovering an
assortment of stone and metal disks imprinted with jagged symbols.  Nearby,
they found a dozen angled and interlocked metallic forms, as well as several
ancient figurines representing what could easily be described as men in bulky
pressure suits.  There were entire bins filled with assorted rocks dressed in
unknown runes, next to a box of fossils.  Set upon one stand, a handful of
shiny orbs and cubes, each bisected by bands of glowing white, pivoted slowly,
constantly.

“I’m not seeing anything worth occupying a system
over,” said Zerki.  “A lot of this stuff looks like it could be alien in
origin, but there’s no way to know for sure without getting it back to a lab.”

“What is all this stuff?” Gavin quietly asked. 
“Most of the placards only list harvest dates.”

Valerie teased, “It’s old.”

He smirked, giving her his full attention. 
“Thanks, that’s very insightful.”

She laughed and glanced to her tablet as it beeped
at her.  “Captain, they’re almost done.  D’Arro’s loading in all the
equipment.”