Destroyer (Hidden Planet Book 1) Page 3

  Calexa fervently hoped the Medusa’s powerful triticore missiles had bought them a sliver of time. She’d spent a small fortune on the damn things.

  “I need to get to Torandor,” S said, her voice cracking ever-so-slightly. Maybe there were real emotions beneath her flawless porcelain exterior. “Is there any way around this mess?”

  “The only way out now is to jump,” Calexa snapped. “I warned you about the dangers of taking the unguarded route.”

  “I signed the agreement-waiver. I was willing to take the risk. So were you.”

  “Yeah.” For the amount of credits the Primean had offered, Calexa and her crew would have flown to the depths of hell and back. With three Grand Maximums, one could buy a livable planet in the Nykrion System, install a decent planetary defense unit, and comfortably retire. “Too bad the risk comes in the form of Paxnath slave-hunters. Do you even know how they treat their body-slaves?”

  S kept quiet. Secrets swirled in her eyes, but it wasn’t Calexa’s place to tease them out. It would be highly unprofessional of her to ask why a pure-blooded Primean and her entire retinue of human servants had hired Calexa and her crew of mercs to ferry them to the refuge-planet of Torandor.

  No questions asked. That was one of the cardinal rules of the Fiveways, and it was the reason small mercenary outfits like theirs could charge big bucks. The bigger the risk, the bigger the price. Danger money was always tempting, but it was also a gamble.

  This time they’d been unlucky.

  “Should’ve stuck to killing Paxnath,” Calexa muttered under her breath. S raised an eyebrow. If there had only been one Paxnath stealth-cruiser, they could have returned fire, crippled the damn thing, and boarded it. But five fully armed Paxnath ships was too many to handle.

  “Sorry about the turbulence. I’m nearly at the J-point, Cal.” Raphael was still on the comm. “You sure about this? I don’t even have rough co-ords. We’re going into completely unknown territory.”

  The walls shook with the force of another blast.

  “Do you even have to ask, Raf? Do it.” As she gave the order, Calexa watched S closely. The tall woman’s stance was deceptively relaxed. Her slender arms hung loosely by her sides, and her unnaturally green eyes were clear and serene. She radiated… nothing. No panic, no fear, no tension. That hint of desperation Calexa had detected earlier—that tiny, almost imperceptible crack—had vanished. Perhaps she’d imagined it.

  “Where will the jump take us?” The Primean’s voice didn’t waver as the Medusa rode the shockwaves, shaking violently. They dropped to the floor.

  “Wherever the Netherverse decides.”

  A thrill of uncertainty coursed down Calexa’s metal-impregnated spine. They hadn’t been forced to make a Panic Jump in a long, long time. What they were about to do was incredibly dangerous, but if they didn’t go now, they were dead.

  “Incoming!” Raphael yelled. “Our shields are fucked. I’m going to go.”

  Calexa grabbed S by the shoulders and rolled as a wave of energy smashed into the Medusa’s starboard side. She found a handhold and hauled the Primean into her landing seat. “In you go,” she grunted, her bionic joints absorbing the impact. The automated restraints came down, locking S into place.

  Boom! “Come on, Raf!” Calexa hung onto the handhold with all her strength as the Medusa shook like a piece of space-junk in an asteroid storm. “What are you waiting for?”

  Silence. Raphael was probably concentrating, or maybe they were already touching the edge of the Netherverse. The comms always went dead when they entered the Silverstream.

  Calexa’s suspicions were confirmed when a faint electric tingle rippled across her skin. Beside her, the Primean had gone still. S lifted a shaky hand to her mouth, as if she were about to retch.

  A loud roar engulfed the cabin, drowning out everything else. Then, as quickly as it had started, the sound died away. Calexa hauled herself into the seat beside S. “First time riding the Netherverse?”

  Unable to speak, S merely nodded. Despite the fact that S was a self-righteous, stuck-up, untouchable Primean, Calexa felt a sudden stab of pity for the woman. “For some reason, your kind don’t tolerate inter-dimensional travel well.” Her voice softened. “Take a deep breath and close your eyes. Trust me, it gets better. In a moment, you won’t feel like emptying your guts all over my floor.”

  “H-how did you know?”

  “I just know.” The debilitating nausea Primeans experienced when entering the Netherverse was something she’d learned about from the two halfbreeds on her crew, but Calexa wasn’t about to spill the beans on the twins. Primeans got all funny when it came to things like genetic purity, and breeding with humans was strictly forbidden.

  For ‘ethical’ reasons, the offspring of such unions rarely survived.

  A low hum reverberated throughout the cabin, and suddenly the whole damn ship—the seats, the floor, and the metal walls—bristled with a faint static charge. If they were near a viewport right now, they would see a stream of silver-blue light outside. Calexa’s scalp tingled as her short brown hair rose into the air. She couldn’t see her reflection, but unlike S, whose braids curved over her head in neat, orderly rows, she probably looked ridiculous.

  The hair-raising static was just one of the strange effects of riding through the Netherverse—nicknamed the Silverstream—a parallel dimension where thousands of light-years could pass in the blink of an eye.

  “Don’t worry,” she said dryly, “we’ll be back in the Universe soon. We’re probably already there.” Was it possible to be in two places at once? Inter-dimensional travel did funny things to the space-time continuum. Fudge the co-ordinates and one could overshoot the mark by a thousand light-years. There were even reports of spacecraft existing in two places at once. Like most space phenomena, the Netherverse was poorly understood, but some were crazy enough to ride it anyway, throwing their fates to the mercy of the Silverstream.

  “There’s no way of predicting where we’ll end up, is there?” S had regained her composure a little, but her voice was taut with apprehension. She’d probably never encountered anything like this in her sterile, predictable, perfect Primean world.

  “Nope. Just pray that we end up close enough to some semblance of civilization.”

  And beg the stars that the aliens we encounter won’t be of the enslaving, flesh-eating, or kill-on-sight varieties.

  Calexa’s thoughts ran to dire places, but out of consideration for her paying customer, she kept her mouth shut.

  Chapter Two

  “We’re down to backup power and reserve oxygen,” Raphael was back online, but his voice was faint, the transmission patchy and crackling with static. “Our main powerbank was damaged by a blast-surge. It’s nothing Monroe can’t fix, but it’ll take some time. You’d better rug up, because I’m going to kill the heat, and as you’ve probably already noticed, I’ve dimmed the lights and reduced the internal gravity.” He sighed. “Jumping through the Netherverse uses a lot of energy, but at least we shot out of there at phenomenal speed, so we’ll keep moving without too much effort. I’m running a location scan. I’ll give you an update as soon as I get our bearings. In the meantime, try not to breathe too much. Monroe’s located the air-leak and plugged it, but we lost a big chunk of our air reserves. Space sucks.”

  “It’s one hell of a vacuum,” Calexa said dryly as she jumped down into the armory, bypassing the ladder and landing lightly on her feet. She’d left S in the main passenger bay with her terrified human servants. The Primean had been unexpectedly gentle with the women as she tried to calm them down.

  Zahra greeted Calexa with a lazy half-wave. She was standing in front of a neatly arranged row of weapons racks, her grey-green eyes narrowed. “The blast-cartridges are all fully charged, but once they’re depleted, we won’t have any juice left until Monroe gets the powerbanks back online. We’ll be down to naked blades and our fists… that’s if we actually encounter anyone to fight in the first place. Why do I
always assume everyone else in the Universe is hostile?”

  “Comes with the territory.” Calexa scanned the impressive collection of weapons, her lips quirking into a wry smile as she attempted to lighten the mood. “Remember when we couldn’t even afford a decent armory? You were so desperate for a blast-weapon you stole a Zarakian warlord’s photon multiplier.”

  “That thing ended up being a total piece of shit.” Zahra rolled her eyes. “Those Zarakians aren’t really as badass as they look. I don’t get what all the fuss—”

  “Hey, Cal?” Raphael’s voice cut through their conversation like a lightblade. “Are you near a monitor?”

  “Yeah. What’s up?”

  “Turn it on, now.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know how that thing evaded our surveillance. It just appeared out of nowhere.” Raphael’s subdued tone sent a warning prickle down the back of Calexa’s neck. Her navigator was normally as cool-as-ice, but now he sounded… afraid.

  Calexa waved her hand across the surveillance monitor to activate it. No response. She slammed her fist into the wall and the ancient thing flickered to life.

  “Oh, bloody hell,” she whispered, going still.

  Zahra swore.

  “What the hell is that?” Calexa croaked. She stared at the screen in disbelief. Maybe she was seeing things; a side-effect of the dropping oxygen concentration.

  A ship floated before them. It was unlike anything she’d seen before.

  The monitor seemed to strain under the weight of the immense craft. It glided past silently, ominously, an endless mass of smooth metal and slow-blinking lights.

  A chill ran through Calexa, raising goosebumps along her forearms. The cabin’s rapidly plummeting temperature didn’t help. “Zoom out. I want to get an idea of how big this thing is.”

  “Hold on…” Zahra played with the controls, entering a swift string of commands. “Let me just…” She frowned, a look of intense concentration crossing her features. She zoomed out once, then twice, then three times.

  The alien ship completely filled the screen. It had no beginning and no end. It had swallowed the stars.

  “How big is this thing?” Calexa rubbed her arms, trying to ward off the cold. She shifted on her feet, ignoring the dull ache that started at the base of her spine and wormed its way into her shoulder blades. It was a familiar sensation. Cold and fatigue didn’t sit well with her bionic vertebral implants.

  Zahra shook her head in disbelief. “It’s bigger than any spacecraft I’ve seen before, and I’ve been around.” Nothing much could faze Zahra Maleki, but now she looked totally spooked. “It’s strange that they haven’t tried to make contact yet. If they’re anything but hostile, I’ll eat my fucking combat suit.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t recognize the design, Cal. I’ve seen everything from giant Bardak freighters to those spooky Vor Dhanu battleships, and this ain’t none of those. What the hell are we supposed to do now, Captain?”

  “We’re running on backup power. We’ve taken critical damage. I’ve got a passenger bay full of terrified humans who are indentured to one weird-ass Primean, and we don’t have fixed co-ordinates…” Calexa turned away from the monitor and began to pace. Her bionic joints loosened with the movement, her strides becoming fluid and powerful as kinetic motion kicked in. She massaged her temples, trying to clear her thoughts. “For once, I’ve got nothing. There’s no way we can fight that. We can’t outrun it either. We don’t have enough energy left to power the jump-drive.”

  “In other words, we’re screwed.” Zahra wasn’t the type to sugar-coat things.

  “I’m sorry, Zahra.” Frustration coursed through Calexa as she locked eyes with her friend. “I’m out of ideas.”

  Before them, the massive alien ship continued to drift across the monitor. Calexa didn’t give voice to the obvious.

  Space was a dark and empty place indeed, and out on the far reaches of the Universe, ships went missing from time to time. They could die here, or worse. Beyond the stars, there existed fates worse than death.

  Especially for humans.

  Zahra placed a consoling hand on Calexa’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault, Cal. There was no way we could have predicted those Paxnath would appear out of nowhere, or that they’d be traveling in a bloody fleet. They never travel in fleets. We barely made it out of there in one piece, but at least we’re alive.”

  “For now. Fucking Paxnath. We should have waited for a safer job. Anything involving those goddamned Primeans always ends up getting complicated.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up over it, Cal. The higher the risk, the higher the reward. If not for that Paxnath ambush, we would have pulled it off and found our way out of the Fiveways for good. It was a big-money job for a reason, a once-in-a-century kind of thing.”

  “Shit.” Calexa grappled with fear and self-doubt. “I was hoping to get them to Torandor within the fortnight, not deliver our passengers into the jaws of some mysterious alien super-race.”

  “Super-race?”

  “Look at that thing. What kind of beings do you think are capable of creating something so huge?” She could see the edge of the ship now. It was all straight lines and sharp angles, a giant blade slicing through the obsidian fabric of the Universe. No living creature should be able to create something so monstrous.

  A metallic groan echoed through the cabin and the Medusa listed to one side. As the floor went diagonal under Calexa’s feet, she glanced at the navigation screens in alarm. “What the hell’s happening?”

  “Something’s overriding our momentum.” Raphael sounded eerily detached. Suddenly, the dim backup lighting died and the charge-lights on the weapons rack went out, shrouding them in shadow. “Don’t mind the blackout. I’m temporarily redirecting all power to the thrusters, but the drag-force is too—” Abruptly, the comm died.

  The alien craft on the monitor grew bigger and bigger, swallowing up the screen.

  “It’s pulling us in, isn’t it?”

  Zahra nodded. In the faint silvery glow of the monitor, her expression was calm, but her hands trembled slightly. “Some sort of electromagnetic drag-field would be my guess.”

  The monitor blinked out.

  “Shit.”

  Squinting in the near-darkness, Calexa pulled her PX-45 from its holster and checked the energy clip. She did it without thinking, the reflexive action giving her a fleeting sense of control. A thin row of blue lights flickered along the clip; it was fully charged. She snapped it back into its receiver and selected another weapon—a frag-grenade—from the weapons rack before turning toward the bridge-side exit. She needed to get to the observation dome so she could see what the hell was going on.

  “Maybe they’ll be friendly?” Zahra’s teeth flashed in the darkness as Calexa looked over her shoulder. “A benevolent species with higher intelligence. I’ve always wanted to encounter a race of enlightened beings.”

  “When has that ever turned out to be the case? The Universe is populated with assholes and you know it. All we can do is prepare for the worst.”

  “And hope for the best?”

  “And try to get out of this alive… and free.”

  “And if that’s not an option?”

  They shared a silent look of understanding. “You know all my hangups, Zar. I don’t deal well with subjugation.”

  Neither of them dared say what was really on their minds; that deep down, they were absolutely terrified of what would happen next.

  Chapter Three

  The monstrous ship that had swallowed the stars now swallowed the Medusa. A gaping black maw of an entrance opened up in its side, and some mysterious, irresistible force dragged them toward an uncertain fate. They were utterly helpless against it. Raphael had given up on resistance. Feeding what little juice they had left into the thrusters was a futile waste of energy, and as for the idea of using their remaining missiles…

  Against a vessel of this size, that would be insa
nity.

  From her vantage point inside the bridge’s observation dome, all Calexa could do was stare as they flew into the abyss. Raphael had chased them away from the navigation pod, demanding absolute silence so he could concentrate on keeping the Medusa’s failing systems online.

  Their usually laid-back navigator was tense. They were all fucking tense.

  “We’re totally screwed. I mean, we’ve been screwed before, but this time we are screwed.” Beside her, Mai let her Irradium cannon drop to the floor with a heavy thud. The bloody thing probably weighed close to a hundred pounds, but Mai carried it around as if it were as light as a feather. Like Calexa and Zahra, Mai had undergone enhancement therapy on that shit-hole of a planet called Dashki-5. Her bones had been coated in a metal composite, enabling her to carry some very heavy things around.

  Calexa didn’t know what to say, because Mai was absolutely right. She shook her head as she pressed her palm against the cold surface of the observation window, trying to see beyond the small halo of light that surrounded the Medusa. The ship’s navigation lights could only penetrate so far into the inky blackness.

  Darkness engulfed them, obliterating the glittering tapestry of space. Without the familiar backdrop of stars, Calexa felt anchorless and rudderless. They were in freefall, and it was utterly terrifying.

  Calexa’s breath misted in the frigid air as she exchanged a look with Mai and Zahra. The dim light was unkind to her companions, accentuating their tired faces, deepening the dark circles under their eyes, and highlighting the pallor that came from too many days spent away from the warm caress of a decent sun.

  They were wide-eyed, ashen-faced ghosts.

  She had no doubt she looked just as bad. A good night’s sleep was a luxury she hadn’t enjoyed in years. In real life, there was no such thing as a deep, dreamless sleep. There were only snatches of fitful rest, stolen in-between visits to grim, charmless destinations.

  “Do the girls in the passenger bay have enough thermal gear?” Instead of worrying about her chronic insomnia, Calexa turned to more practical matters.