Ereshkigal’s War (Edge of the Splintered Galaxy Book 5), page 7
“Confirmed,” Nadevina reported. “The vessel is dormant. I’m not detecting any signs of activity.”
Shandara placed her hand on the bioship’s tough skin.
“Careful,” Xai said. “It is bleeding.”
Shandara grunted and looked back at him. “So?”
“Draconian blood is extremely hot,” Xai said.
Shandara lifted a purple eyebrow. “Blood?”
Peiun pointed at gashes along the side of the bioship, leaking boiling yellow blood into the dirt. “Their ships are organic,” he explained. “The Draconians do not construct their ships in shipyards like we do. They grow them in vats, then augment them with technology, like weapon systems, life support, and propulsion. Beyond its skin, muscle, and bones are small passages for the crew to operate in.”
“Seems like a waste of time to me,” Shandara said, taking several steps backward and gazing up at the height of the bioship. “Look at the size of this! It would have taken them years to grow it to this size and lots of nutrients to keep it alive.”
“Which shows that the Draconians are a species that is highly adept at advanced genetics,” Peiun said. “Simply genetically engineer what you need then grow it. If they can do that, they can grow as much food as they need to feed it. Finding water among the stars shouldn’t be a problem if you’re that advanced. Whereas for us, we must build our ships using mined metals, a finite resource I need not remind you, from the systems we control to construct them. And then later repair them.”
Peiun strode to the side and searched for an opening to the ship or a wound big enough to slip through. His team followed behind and assisted in the search.
“Whereas organic ships,” Nadevina said after a pause, “simply heal any damage they sustain.”
He grinned. “Exactly.”
“Then why isn’t this ship healing itself?” Stanxi grunted.
“That is an answer I intend to find out very soon.” Peiun pointed at a large gash cut into the ship, gushing out a steady stream of yellow, bubbling blood. “Please obtain tissue and blood samples. Hopefully, our medical team will learn something from it.”
His team collected samples of the bioship’s blood then sliced off thin strips of its hull with their charged plasma blades. They deposited each collected sample into specially designed storage containers mounted to the waists of their suits. With that task complete, the team resumed circling the unmoving ship. They found nothing. The group split up to collect more samples and search for the entrance that Peiun was determined to find.
After ten minutes, Xai called out over the communication channel. “Captain!”
Peiun accessed Xai’s location via his HNI. The young warrior had wandered to the rear of the crashed Draconian bioship. He found Xai standing and pointing at a sizable gash in the ship’s flesh hull, large enough to fit a man twice Peiun’s height through it with ease.
“I think we can enter through here,” Xai said.
“Excellent work.” Peiun patted the warrior’s shoulder. “Everyone, with me.”
The team gathered around Peiun, then flared their plasma swords, their blades blazing with green light. Standing shoulder to shoulder, the warriors cut deep into the wound, so deep that they cut through the rest of the thick flesh, past the muscle tissue and then eventually into the interior of the bioship. They had to avoid stepping on the boiling blood pooling on the ground while passing through the hole.
Stanxi, Shandara, and Xai fanned out and took up a defensive position inside the Draconian ship. Stanxi took the lead and held his left arm forward, activating his wrist-mounted shield generator. Peiun and Nadevina followed behind Stanxi, Shandara, and Xai and walked through a corridor made of pulsating wet flesh. The walls and ceilings were the same and fitted with tiny lights. Peiun kept his ceremonial plasma sword in his grip as they pushed deeper into the flesh-made corridors and heard the faint beats of a heart in the distance. The bioship was dying.
“And what are we looking for?” Xai asked.
“More samples and any technology that looks valuable,” Peiun said. “And a prisoner.”
“Since when do we do that?” Xai said. “Take prisoners?”
“I want answers,” Peiun said, wincing when several droplets of a slimy substance fell over his helmet’s visor, rolled down it, and left behind translucent lines. “I encountered a strange Draconian who spoke to me and knew of Foster. One of these ships belongs to him, and I hope it is this one.”
His team stepped over Draconian foot soldiers on the ground, groaning and barely moving.
Nadevina scanned and studied an unmoving Draconian. She peered at the data that appeared as a projection rotating before her. “It’s still alive,” she revealed. “Barely.”
“Take samples of its blood too.”
Peiun’s team arrived in a circular-shaped room with walls that looked like the inside of someone’s mouth, a bruised and bleeding one at that. Pungent slime dripped from the ceiling, making a mess of the computer terminals in the middle. Peiun approached one terminal and wiped away the filth from the screen, noting that it was the same slime that had splattered his helmet earlier.
“Do you know how to use that, Captain?” Nadevina asked him.
“None whatsoever. But it is bound to have information we could use,” he replied.
Peiun accessed his HNI and used it to load a file containing all intel regarding Draconian computer systems. He found very little helpful information. The Hashmedai Empire was still unfamiliar with the Draconians. Peiun failed to get the computer to activate after seven attempts. He assumed that a biometric system locked out unauthorized users, such as himself.
Just for good measure, he walked to an unmoving Draconian on the floor, powered his ceremonial sword, and sliced off its hand at the wrist. Using the severed hand, Peiun slapped its palm against the computer’s screen.
The terminal flashed on suddenly. He kept the dead hand pressed against the screen, then set his HNI to record what the computer station returned, scrolling Draconian text—
A rumbling sound resonated like a snarling dragon waking up.
“What was that?” Shandara said, stepping backward and eyeing their surroundings.
Xai stepped back, drew his plasma sword, and eyed the bruised flesh on the wall. “The ship is healing!”
The bruise on the wall faded and restored to its normal appearance.
8 TETSUYA
Commercial District 1-01
Hanti, Apolnar, Uelaria System
September 13, 2121, 13:15 SST (Sol Standard Time)
When Tetsuya and Pernoy reached the city’s upper level, he saw more white lines fall from the sky and strike the mountains in the distance. The horizon flashed white and then a mushroom cloud arose. Tetsuya pondered to himself, Who is nuking the planet?
Pernoy looked ahead with what little energy she had left. The central hub was nearby. “We’re almost there!”
He smiled as he continued to help her limp toward their destination. “And you doubted me?”
Hashmedai warriors with flaring plasma swords guarded the central hub entrance, where droves of frightened civilians pushed their way toward it. It was an enormous tower within the arcology, easily the tallest freestanding structure there and covered with windows that were now protected by thick, armor-plated emergency shutters. Tetsuya had assumed the hub was some government building. But no, this was the central hub, a base for the colony’s armed forces, where the system lord governed the colony and where the frozen colonists who hadn’t been revived from cryo slept.
And now it was their only place for salvation against whoever the fuck the aliens were.
“Tetsuya!”
A youthful voice called out to him.
He spun back and saw two of the Hashmedai kids he’d been teaching how to play baseball. They were waving for help, their faces covered in soot, clothes torn and bloody. Two kids were missing from the group, while the two who called and waved to them quickly hunkered behind the rubble of what used to be a marketplace. Missed projectiles and beams flew over their heads seconds later. The aliens were targeting kids too, slowly closing the gap with their coil and beam rifles held forward.
“Pernoy,” Tetsuya said. He released her from his grip and eyed the lineup of fleeing civilians. “Are you able to?” He gestured toward the evacuation shelter’s entrance.
“I’ll be fine from here,” Pernoy said. “Go get them, please.”
Pernoy limped toward the lineup to enter the shelter inside the hub. Tetsuya darted back to the two kids, screaming for his aid, pushing past debris and smoke to rescue them. When the two kids saw him sprinting over, they mustered the bravery needed to get up from the rubble and run toward him. He wished they hadn’t done that; their dash only alerted a pair of searching aliens.
He held his hand out to the two kids. “Get down!”
Then he lifted the beam rifle he had stolen from a dead alien shock trooper earlier and pulled the trigger. A white beam slammed into the left alien’s shields, creating a dome-shaped blue ripple. Evidently some of the aliens had shields. He assumed the ones he fought earlier lost their shields having faced off against the colony’s defense force beforehand. Tetsuya’s second shot destroyed the alien’s barrier, and his third shot vaporized the invader. The alien should have been looking at him and not the frightened, helpless kids.
The sudden death of the left alien sent his partner scrambling for cover behind the overturned tables of a restaurant, its fleeting footsteps carrying it away from Tetsuya’s white lines of energy blasts. The kids had a clear path to safe cover around the bend of a commerce station. Tetsuya laid down some covering fire for the kids to escape, then dashed and hid behind the wall with them.
He had one critical question to ask the two boys. “Where are your friends?”
“We had to leave them behind!”
“Where?”
The second kid pointed backward. “Just beyond the marketplace.”
“I’ll grab them. The rest of you, keep running!” He pointed at the skyway ahead. “The shelters should be down that path. Get there. Pernoy’s worried about you.”
Tetsuya placed his back against the wall and slowly inched to the side where the lingering alien was probably still lurking and waiting behind its cover. He’d have to take its ass out first then sneak past the remains of the marketplace to find the other two missing kids.
“Be careful,” the first kid said, tugging on Tetsuya’s arm. “There is a man with a plasma sword shaped like an Earth katana.”
Tetsuya gasped. Could it be? A plasma katana? Yes. It must be him. “Is he Hashmedai?” Tetsuya asked.
“Couldn’t see him clearly with the smoke, but his eyes weren’t glowing.”
A grin spread across Tetsuya’s face. “I wouldn’t worry about that man.”
Tetsuya peeked around the corner, eyeing the rubble he last saw the alien hide behind. He looked long enough to be convinced that it retreated. He was safe to push forward and did so by taking slow and silent steps. Tetsuya’s long-forgotten days as an HLF operative came back to him. Past battles with UNE marines, Hammerhead special forces commandos, Radiance rangers, and then a deadly encounter with EDF and UNE marines back in Vancouver played in his mind. Every battle, bombing, and near-death experience rushed through his thoughts like a movie on fast-forward. He didn’t even realize he had crossed into the marketplace, let alone breathed in too much smoke.
The crackle of gunfire echoed suddenly. The aliens wielding coil guns were near and probably engaged Hashmedai warriors in fierce street fighting. Not probably, they did because Tetsuya heard swords slice through armor, and a few limbs hit the streets, followed by the victorious war cry of a Hashmedai. At least some aliens were dying—
The top floor of a high-rise building exploded, raining glass toward the streets he stood in. Tetsuya got the fuck out of the way before the shards shredded him to pieces.
Crash.
That could have been the end of his life if he wasn’t so fast.
He was deeper into the city now and eagerly pushed past blinding smoke in search of the kids. There was a man with a plasma katana nearby. There was only one person Tetsuya knew who would have one, and that person was the man he’d been waiting to hear from for days. Tetsuya’s ride off the tropical planet of Apolnar had come at last. Right in the nick of time too.
Tetsuya discovered the two missing boys after a left-hand turn down the street. One boy was pinned under a wall slab that came crashing down. The other boy stayed, trying and failing to remove the heavy piece of metal off his friend. His tiny hands weren’t strong enough for the job.
“Hold on,” Tetsuya said through the smoke around. “I got you.”
The kid struggling to lift the debris looked in Tetsuya’s direction, his red eyes glowing within the smoke. “Is that you, Tetsuya?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
He laid the rifle on the street, got a good grip on the debris, and lifted it. It took Tetsuya six tries, but eventually he lifted it up just enough for the wounded boy to crawl away. Tetsuya let go of the metal, and it hit the road with a thud. Way too much blood covered the boy who had been trapped. It was a miracle that he could stand up, though his buddy had to help him stay standing.
The injured boy glanced at the path Tetsuya had come from and narrowed his glowing eyes. “Is that Pernoy?”
“Yes,” Pernoy groaned.
Tetsuya spun to see that Pernoy limped toward them through the smoke. She left a thin line of blood behind, then collapsed to her knees ahead of the two boys and wrapped her arms around them.
“Pernoy!” the other boy cried.
“I got worried when I saw these two were missing,” Pernoy said.
“You should have stayed in line!” Tetsuya said to her as he grabbed his rifle off the road. “I’m pretty sure they’d be doctors looking after that wound now—”
Pernoy collapsed forward, hit the street face first between the two boys, and didn’t move.
“Is she . . . dead?” one of them asked.
Tetsuya couldn’t feel a consistent pulse on Pernoy when he reached for her neck. “Get to the hub. I’ll take care of her!”
The two kids limped back through the smoke and headed toward the hub and its emergency shelters. Tetsuya dropped the heavy rifle, scooped up Pernoy in his arms, and looked in the hub’s direction, wincing at its distance. Pernoy would die in his arms by the time he reached it. She lost too much blood as it was. He spun around and eyed the edge of the marketplace, the last known location of the plasma katana man, who was his ride off the planet and a lift to a ship with lots of medical supplies that could patch Pernoy up. And resuscitate her.
Tetsuya moved to the marketplace’s edge. As he walked, he felt Pernoy’s bloody hand chinch his top. She was still alive, barely, but she was still there. Just a few more meters to go and he’d find his ride. And then Pernoy went limp. There was nothing he could do other than bring her to the man with the katana. Bring her to Jazz and the crew of the Marauder.
After passing rubble, dead Hashmedai, dead aliens, and scores of fires burning uncontrollably, Tetsuya, carrying Pernoy’s unmoving and bleeding body, approached a glint of glowing green light. As he moved closer to the light, he saw what looked like a man in the distance holding a weapon glowing with plasma. It was a plasma katana all right.
“Jazz!” Tetsuya screamed. “Jazz, what the fuck, man? What took you so long?! Over here! I got a critically injured Hashmedai woman who needs medical attention—”
An Aryile man stepped out from the smoke and powered down the plasma katana’s glow.
It wasn’t Jazz.
It was the other guy who could have had a katana like that. Jainuzei, as he recalled his name from the story Jazz told him. And Jainuzei was supposed to be dead.
“So you were the one who slayed my men,” Jainuzei said. An alien soldier stood with Jainuzei too. The alien and Jainuzei looked like friends and wore the same combat armor. The difference was that Jainuzei didn’t have a helmet on. Jainuzei glared at Pernoy in his arms. “Hmm, despite the chaos around you, you took the time to save this woman. You are an honorable warrior. A human at that. What are you doing here?”
“I should be asking you the same thing.” Tetsuya stepped backward. “What the fuck is an Aryile doing here? Here to finish what you started?”
Jainuzei’s eyes never left Pernoy’s body. “Her wounds seem grievous. She will not make it.” He extended his hand toward Tetsuya. “Come with me, accept Ereshkigal into your life, and the Goddess Empress will save her.”
“The fuck?” Pernoy’s body grew stiff. Now, Tetsuya couldn’t feel a pulse after he placed her on the ground and checked. Pernoy had gone into cardiac arrest.
“Do you accept?” Jainuzei continued, his hand still held to him.
He looked behind Jainuzei and spotted an alien dropship that had landed on the street amidst the blowing smoke. Inside the ship were the aliens using what he guessed were medical devices to heal their wounded. Tetsuya’s mind put together a new plan: kill all the bad guys, take their medical tech, and heal Pernoy with it. Assuming he figured out how to work their tech. Assuming they didn’t kill him. It was a stupid plan, but it was all he had to work with. The alternative was accepting Ereshkigal, whoever the fuck she was, or backtracking to the hub away from the life-saving medical tech that could resuscitate Pernoy.
Slowly, Tetsuya stood up and reached into his pocket for his old ePistol. Just shoot Jainuzei in the head, pop his alien partner, and then he’d just have to gun down the aliens who were too busy mending their wounded. That was the plan. The stupid plan. The smart plan was to accept Jainuzei’s offer, which required surrendering to an Aryile. Fuck surrendering to an Aryile. The Aryile race were the founders of the Radiance Union, a bunch of screwballs who wanted to exterminate the Hashmedai race because their religion told them to do so.
Tetsuya put his plan into motion, pointed his pistol at Jainuzei, and pulled the trigger.
