Chapter V
Captain Hale took stock of the situation while he stood guard at the door. Honestly, a few things just didn't add up here.
Captured by Dridune? Sure, he could accept that. His star fighter had been adrift after that last battle, and he was pretty sure that his side had lost. He wasn't positive about that last fact though, seeing as how he had lost consciousness roughly around the same time when his oxygen recyclers had lost power. Anything could have happened after that point.
Put into a slave labor camp/research facility? He could accept that too. The Dridune were a sick lot whose one goal was the domination of everything in the galaxy. Frankly, he was surprised that they hadn't murdered him and dissected him as soon as he had been captured.
The purple psychic unicorn that had freed him from his collar? He watched her for a few seconds as she made her way to the next bed. Heck, he had seen his wing turn on him during that last battle against the Dridune! A purple psychic unicorn was tame compared to that.
No, what he couldn't accept was the fact that he still had all of his cybernetics.
The way he saw it, there were only three possibilities here: One, the Dridune were far more arrogant than he originally thought. Two, an infiltrator had let him slip by with his cybernetics at great risk to himself. Or three, this was a trap, and the Dridune wanted to learn more about human tactics in a controlled setting.
Knowing how devious the Dridune were, he wouldn't be surprised that this was a trap. However, according to the time stamp on his ocular implants, he had been a prisoner of the Dridune for a full three months. While it was possible that they would have waited this long to set everything up, it was highly unlikely given the fact that the Dridune had all the patience of a two year old in a candy shop.
No, it was far more likely that it was arrogance or an infiltrator to blame for his good fortune.
While he was musing overall of this, he noticed a red light start to flash at the edge of his vision in his left eye. He sighed gently to himself as he turned off the low battery indicator. Oh well, it isn't anything insurmountable. I just have to find a power outlet to drain, then I'll be ready for action, he thought to himself.
“Say, you didn't happen to see any power outlets around here, did you?” he whispered as the purple unicorn made her way to the next bed.
He saw her pause and look at him curiously. “H'es enta'ri uldana?” she asked him in her strangely musical language.
He just shrugged, then sighed to himself. This wasn't going to be easy, and the language barrier was only going to compound the problem. Normally, he would have had his linguistics analyzer working on this, except he needed to conserve power for his weapon systems.
After about thirty minutes, the purple unicorn had woken and freed every prisoner in the room. Some of them were crying, some looked like they were praying. All of them looked terrified and hopeless.
Well, almost all of them. Three of the prisoners; a Lionel, a Jakra and a Peli, separated themselves from the others and made there way over to where he was standing. The only reason he recognized their species was because he had fought alongside them on the front lines.
Well, not these individuals specifically, but with their races in general. Lionels were a strong, proud race of cat-like hominids, Jakra were a highly intelligent race of insectoid mantis men, and the Pelius were a race of blue skinned hominids similar to humans.
The Lionel approaching him had brown fur and a deep red mane. His eyes were a deep blue, and his face was covered in scars and tribal tattoos. “Gashalt Primius,” he said, giving the customary greeting of his people, followed by their customary salute by striking a closed fist against his chest. “I am Pride Leader Rashi Alik. By chance do you know where we are Terran? Most of the others here cannot speak Galactic Standard, and the few that do are just as confused as I,” he said in his deep, growling voice.
Pride Leader? That puts him at roughly the same rank as a GSM Sergent. “Can't say that I do, but she might,” Hale said, jerking his thumb towards the unicorn across the room.
“The equine?” the Jakra buzzed as she looked at the unicorn, her large, iridescent green eyes narrowing suspiciously. At the moment, the purple pony was levitating a clipboard and quill in front of her and was furiously scribbling something down. “Do you think she is in league with the Mindstealers?”
“I don't think so, I ain't ever seen no squid levitate nothing before,” the Peli said with a rueful shake of his head. “If she were work'n with 'em, don't you think they would have gotten the secret of how to do that out of 'em by now?”
Captain Hale nodded his head in agreement. “I agree, but I think it's too early to tell at this point. We will have to wait until we get my Linguistics Analyzer back online before we can hope to ask her anything, seeing as the only thing she speaks is her native tongue.”
“You packing cyber gear partner? How did they not take that crap off you?” the Peli asked incredulously.
Captain Hale didn't answer immediately. Instead he pressed the inside of his wrist, opening the compartment located on the inside of his arm. “Honestly, I have no clue. I was unconscious when they captured me, so my best theory right now is that a spook is responsible for my good luck,” he said as he fiddled with the mechanism for a little bit.
“This is all interesting, but what do we do from here?” the Jakra buzzed in irritation.
“Well, I have always felt that introductions were a great way to start any new endeavor,” Alik rumbled pointedly.
“Good call Alik, I'm Lieutenant Captain Zachary Hale, G.A.S.N. fighter pilot,” Hale said seriously.
The effect was instantaneous. All three of them instantly put themselves into some form of attention. The Lionel had his fist to his chest again, the Peli had pulled off a rather sloppy looking marine salute, and the Jakra had her head bowed and her claws were touching the top of her head in respect.
Captain Hale wasn't having any of that though. “Stow the salutes men, we aren't exactly in a position to stand on ceremony here,” he said gruffly.
“But yer a legend! How did they capture ya sir?” the Peli gasped in disbelief.
“That's really a story for another time. We are in too deep to be swapping war stories right now, but once we get out I promise to tell you the tale,” Hale said dismissively.
“Of course, mighty warrior. I am Kzzalt Hexomer, of Her Majesty's Royal diplomatic staff,” the Jakra said gravely.
The Jakra were an imposing race. They stood about six feet tall on average, with the females being slightly larger than the males. Their bodies were thin, and covered with a chitinous exoskeleton. They had two sets of arms; one larger set of praying mantis-like claws, and another, smaller set of claws that closely resembled hands further down their abdomen. Their heads looked a bit small when compared to their huge mantis claws, but the set of mandibles that sat on their faces didn't make them look any less imposing. Their legs were triple jointed, and ended in a three toed claw. Royals were distinguished from the common drones by the large, iridescent wings that adorned their backs.
Hexomer wasn't a royal however. She stood roughly six foot three, had green eyes, and red chitin with yellow strips running down her back. A rather unusual combination in a drone, Captain Hale thought to himself.
“You're an ambassador?” Hale asked.
Hexomer shook her head. “No, mighty warrior, I am but a humble scribe. My lady's ship came under fire when we were making our way back from a mission to Earth. Our main reactor became damaged, and we were forced to abandon our vessel. I am not sure, but I believe that everyone on board has either been captured or killed,” she said sadly.
The Peli whistled softly at these words. “I'm sorry about that miss, we'll gladly help you get home. Assuming that we can get ourselves out of this rathole, of course,” he said earnestly.
Hale took a second to examine the Peli. He was rather short, standing only about five feet tall. His messy green hair was thick, making it rather hard to see the twin horns that grew on the top of his head. He also seemed to be missing one of his eyebrows, although that probably had something to do with the burn mark on his forehead. His three fingered hands were covered in scars, and Hale could tell that he was missing the tip of one of those fingers. “What's your name soldier?” Hale asked the young Peli curiously.
“Ah, shoot sir, I ain't no soldier, though I did have to go through some combat training. In reality sir? I'm just a grease monkey. M'names Donny Quelzok, and I used to be chief engineer aboard the Valhalla. At least, I was before we was ambushed by them squids coming out of Hyperspace,” The Peli said modestly.
“There is no such thing as 'just a grease monkey' Donny, your job is just as important as mine, maybe even more so,” Captain Hale rebuffed the startled engineer. “Without men like you, men like me wouldn't have a ship to fly or weapons to fire. Don't sell yourself short.”
“I agree with the Captain. Besides, if we can make our way to a vessel, your talents will prove invaluable in our escape from this Hazack,” Alik rumbled in agreement.
Hexomer nodded her head, “Now that introductions are out of the way, it would be best if we formulated some sort of plan. I propose that we—” she started to say, but was interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat behind her.
Hexomer turned around. At first she didn't see anyone there. However, when she heard the sound again, she looked down at its source to find a purple unicorn looking up at her.
* * *
Admiral Zelgius jumped when he heard the priority alarm on his computer go off. Since he happened to be in the shower at the time, this had the effect of causing him to slip on the slick enameled surface and almost knock himself out on the tiled wall.
Luckily, however, the Admiral was a Simiate; A race of sapient monkeys that hailed from the Unlada System. All Simiates were blessed from birth with quick reflexes and a prehensile tail, which he quickly used to catch himself before he fell by latching onto the door handle of the shower. He quickly righted himself as he turned off the water with his foot, gumbling to himself as he did so. “Yeah yeah, I'm coming! Just keep your pants on!” he shouted at the top of his lungs as he shook the water out of his fur.
A partially dry Zelgius quickly pulled the door open and hopped out of the shower, pausing only for a second to wrap a towel around his midsection. He then loped out of the bathroom and sat down at his rather spartan work desk. The men and women under his command were always surprised at how very bare the Admiral's living space was. If it wasn't for the plaque outside the door, one might have been lead to believe that no one had claimed these quarters.
There were no pictures of family members, no mementos, no files or folders. Heck, even the sheets were the regulation white. Not that he preferred it that way, it's just that after the fifth assassination attempt that involved a bomb, he decided that his quarters at Naval Intelligence wasn't the best place to keep any of his private effects.
Quickly he typed in the authorization code, then sat still as the computer read his retina and brainwaves. These precautions seemed like overkill, but not when you took into account who the Galactic Alliance was fighting against.
After a few seconds, the computer beeped in recognition. “Recognize, Admiral Halik Zelgius of Naval Intelligence. Good Evening Admiral. You have one incoming call, Priority One, from Infiltrator Jaleth Shadowfall. Shall I patch her through?”
“Jaleth? But she's stationed and the Dridune research facility! This had better be important to risk blowing her cover,” he muttered to himself. He then rubbed his face with the palms of his hands, groaning in frustration at what was sure to be terrible news. “Patch her through,” he said after regaining his composure.
The screen went black, then flickered back to life as Jaleth's tentacled face appeared on the screen.
“Jaleth, this had better be important. You know you're to keep radio silen—” the aged admiral started to say in his squeaky, Simiate voice, but was interrupted as Jaleth waved her arm at him in desperation.
“I know sir, I know,” she said in the oddly gargling voice of someone who has had their morphology changed into a Dridune. “I wouldn't have called you unless it was of the utmost importance. Sir, I am requesting immediate extraction.”
Zelgius leaned forward, his expression grave. “Have you been discovered Jaleth?” he asked in a serious tone.
“Not yet sir, but I will be in two days,” she said seriously.
“What makes you so certain of this Jaleth?” Zelgius asked her.
“Well sir, in two days we will be having a visit from an inspection team who's mission is to review the science team's progress and inspect the security of the base.”
“...And you believe that the will discover you?” Zelgius asked slowly.
She shook her head. “No sir, I KNOW they will discover me. They are bringing a Psywarrior with them. Sir, they're bringing Hivanti to the base.”
Zelgius felt as if his whole stomach had been turned into ice. Even a low ranking Psywarrior could mean the scrubbing of an operation of this size, but to have someone of Hivanti's caliber on board that station? He would be able to sense that she didn't belong right from the start. The Dridune's reputation was legendary. In fact, all they had on him was rumor and word of mouth. Any of the men that Zelgius had that came within range of his telepathic powers had instantly been recognized as hostile and had been mentally dominated by this demon. Any Dridune that they had captured had spoken as if he were a messenger of God, and considering that they worshiped the Dridune Emperor as a deity, that probably wasn't too far from the truth. “Are you sure it's Hivanti?” he asked, with a slight edge to his voice.
“Sir, I'm absolutely positive that it's Hivanti. All incoming and outgoing traffic has to go through me, and I just got the paperwork for the incoming shuttle today. It's him, sir,” she responded with a slight tremor of fear in her voice.
Zelgius leaned back in his chair and thought for a second. “I'm sorry to tell you this, Jaleth, but the closest extraction vehicle is a full four days out. If you had given us a little more advance warning, I might have been able to arrange for something...” he could see her visibly pale as he talked, and honestly his hearts went out to the poor girl. There was nothing that he could do, however, but give the hardest orders that he could ever give an operative.
He always hated this part, and it never got any easier. “Jaleth, here's what I want you to do. I want you to transmit everything that you have gathered so far, then blow up the station. If you can make sure Hivanti is on board when that cesspit goes up in flames, all the better.” He inhaled slowly, then exhaled. “But as to how you are going to get off, I'm afraid that is up to you. You'll be light-years behind enemy territory, and our nearest extraction ship will have no way of finding you without either of you revealing yourselves to the enemy. Stealth will be your ally, seeing as how Dridune Standard Procedure is to mentally probe all personnel that are found adrift in space.”
He could see the fear in her eyes, but there was determination there as well. “Sir... what about those who are being held captive here?” She stammered.
He let out another explosive sigh. “If you can get any on an escape shuttle with you, then do so. But be warned that those shuttles usually only have enough food and oxygen for about half a dozen standard-sized lifeforms, and that those supplies will only last for about a month. You may have to leave them behind if you want to have a chance of surviving the trip back home.”
He could see her features harden when he said this. “I can't do that sir. I either save all of them, or we all go down.”
His eyes widened slightly at this statement. “Jaleth, you can't possibl—”
“I'm sending my final report now sir,” she said, ignoring his sputtering protests. “I hope you can make use of it, to make our deaths meaningful. On that report is a list of every being that the Dridune have kidnapped and brought to this station... please make sure that their friends and family are made aware of what has happened here. Make sure that they have some form of closure,” she finished as the tears ran freely down her face.
He stared at her for a moment as the computer in front of him received the data she had sent. He slowly swallowed, then nodded in understanding. “I will,” he said as his features hardened and his hand rose in a salute. “May Baznalt prepare a place for you in the world beyond,” he said, invoking the ancient farewell of Jaleth's people.
“Thank you sir. May Baznalt grant the Alliance victory. Farewell,” she said as she signed off.
Even though the screen had gone black, even though he knew that he should really get started on that file that she had sent, Admiral Zelgius couldn't move an inch from his chair. Even hours later, long after his fur had dried, he just continued to sit there.
He had sent many to their deaths before. He was an Admiral, it was part of the job description. However, it never got any easier, and the brave ones were always the toughest.
And she had been one of the bravest.
* * *
“How does that even make any sense?” Doctor Qualda thought incredulously.
For the past two hours he had been examining the malfunctioning collar, trying to figure out how it had stopped functioning, yet still somehow send the signal that it was working in top condition. What he had found had been perplexing to say the least.
Doctor Qualda hated feeling perplexed. It was one of the many reasons why he liked to dissect things so much. “Once you cut something open, all the secrets it held were revealed to you,” he said as he shivered with pleasure at the memory of the last dissection. “Yes... everything becomes so... clear... under a knife and a microscope...” he thought to himself.
At any rate, he had found that the injection system had become cracked, and was leaking Slv-12. That could explain why Equus Sapience was able to regain consciousness. That he could understand. It was a simple break, probably cause by stress or by the subject falling.
No, what he couldn't understand was how the device was deactivated, but still somehow was able to send out a signal.
Literally every single piece of machinery had been deactivated. He had even removed the power cell from the collar to see if that would stop the transmitter from... well, transmitting. But there it sat, blinking as if it was possessed. It perplexed and baffled Doctor Qualda to no end.
So he had run some tests. He had found that power was running through the transmitting device, but somehow the laws of nature had stopped working right where the transmitter connected with the rest of the collar. Not only was it self-generating electricity, but somehow that electricity wasn't jumping to the rest of the device. On top of that, when he had tried to get the power to jump to something else, it had refused to do so. It was almost as if physics had decided to take a holiday.
He had brought in his scanning equipment and had thrown every test he could think of at the collar. He had found nothing. No radiation, no electromagnetic fields (aside from the one that seemed to be generating itself for no good reason), no emissions that he could find whatsoever.
Heck, he had even used a psychic scanner on the device, but all he found were the trace psychic impressions that you'd expect to find on a pair of pants that someone wore on a regular basis.
The psychic impression was odd, however. It seemed to have some sort of message embedded into it, repeating itself every couple of seconds. What that message was, he had no clue. It was in the equine's native tongue, and he didn't have a large enough sample of the equine's language to even think about running it through a linguistics analyzer.
Then, roughly about twenty minutes ago, whatever power that was keeping the signal going suddenly disappeared. In fact, the device acted as if the force that had possessed it had never existed in the first place!
His tentacles wiggled in frustration. It just didn't make any sense! On a whim, he brought up the feed from the equine's escape again. The teleport had looked exactly like any teleport should, at least from the sensor's perspective.
What didn't look normal was the fact that the teleportation signal had come from the equine. No teleportation device could possibly be that small! The power requirements alone meant that you needed a fusion reactor at the very least, not to mention you needed a sensor array for locating the target and the destination, as well as a computer for making the complex quantum calculations needed to ensure that the target made it to its destination in one piece. All of these parts ensured that a teleportation device needed to be at least as large as a star fighter, maybe a little smaller.
But somehow, the strange creature had plucked itself from local space, and had dropped itself somewhere else. Not only that, but that thing had made it look easy.
He had to dissect this thing. Every single thing he learned about this strange creature made it increasingly apparent that it was the key to the ascendancy of the Dridune. If the Dridune could teleport at will, that alone insured not only their total victory over the hated Galactic Alliance, but also their dominance over all creation!
...but first they had to find the creature and get it under control.
Finding where the equine had gone was a simple task. Teleporting always leaves a distinct trail, and at least here physics hadn't failed him. The equine had ended up in the laundry room three decks down. On one tentacle, that meant that they weren't about to be attacked by an Alliance Armada.
On the other tentacle, that also meant that they had a hostile specimen of unknown power and capabilities loose aboard one of the most top secret research facilities in Dridune space. This notion almost made him wet himself.
He sat there for quite some time, pondering on what precisely he should do. He had already informed the security personal of the situation, and they were currently scouring the base searching for the little monster. But what if that wasn't enough? What would happen if the inspection team arrived to find that everyone on board the station had been killed and cocooned in some weird goo? He knew his imagination was playing tricks on him, but at this point he knew next to nothing about the equine. Everything he thought he knew seemed to go out the window where this creature was concerned.
“...I'll probably have my personality striped from me for this, but being a vegetable beats being dead,” he thought out loud as he opened a channel to the approaching inspection ship.
After several heart-pounding minutes, during which he seriously considered committing suicide, a Dridune's face appeared on the monitor. It was a heavily scarred face, and Qualda could see that it was missing some tentacles. It was a face that many Dridune worshiped and feared the galaxy over. “What do you want Qualda?” Hivanti the Psywarrior thought in irritation. “And whatever it is, can't it wait? My inspection team will be there in two days, and any questions or concerns you may have can easily be answered once we get there.”
“A thousand pardons your eminence. It's just that we... have a situation here, and I fear that we may not be properly equipped to deal with it before your arrival...” Qualda said in a simpering, fawning tone of thought.
Without warning, Qualda's world exploded. Pain beyond pain lanced through his whole being, and he felt another's presence examine everything he was. In the back of his mind, he realized that Hivanti's impatience and irritation had made him decide to simply take the information that Qualda was going to willingly give him. For his impertinence, Hivanti sent an extra jolt of mental anguish to that region of Qualda's mind almost before he had finished that thought.
Then, almost as soon as it had begun, it was over. Qualda was lying face down on the cold steel of the station's floor, covered in a cold sweat. As quickly as he could, he got back into his chair, relieved that Hivanti had merely probed him, rather than strip him entirely. Qualda looked up at the monitor, expecting anger in the Psywarrior's eyes.
He hadn't expected fear.
“You were right to inform me of this latest development. My ship's course shall be changed, and we will arrive within the next ten hours. You will be commended for your loyalty in bringing this to my attention,” Hivanti told the recovering scientist. “Do what you can to bring the specimen back under control, but be careful. The creature is not to be trifled with.”
Then, without any further instruction, the line disconnected, leaving Qualda wondering what he had gotten himself into.