Just outside the debris field of the destroyed space station near Bezmore Six...
“Do you see anything?” A voice beside the Admiral spoke as fingers lightly toughed his scalp.
Technically, Vang could see nothing at all. His vision was still blocked by a binder, but at least he was no longer restrained and he’d been moved to his own bed chamber for comfort. But he knew what the Mind Bender was asking for. He was looking for any mental images that might have been triggered.
“No,” Vang responded.
Currently, Vang was reclined in his bed with his hands folded across his abdomen, waiting impatiently for this yavit procedure to work. The Mind Bender was seated beside him and leaning forward to reach Vang’s head. The sour odor of sweat filled his nostrils and Vang bit back the urge to comment about it.
Out of the eleven Mind Bender’s Wexlen had found, Crewman Gynoor had been chosen by the Caretaker, because of his experience working with the mentally impaired on his home world before joining the Legion. But Gynoor wasn’t used to working with the higher officers, so he’d been nervous the moment he’d shown up ten minutes ago. Vang wasn’t terribly surprised there hadn’t been any results as of yet.
The Crewman removed his fingers for a moment, and then their touch came back in slightly different positions than before. That was the sixth time the man had to reposition himself, and Vang had to question if Caretaker Kessler had made the right choice.
“What about now?”
This time there was a flicker of something that moved across Vang’s mental landscape, but it came and went so fast, he couldn’t make out what it might have been.
“I saw a flash of something, but that was all.”
“Hmmm… alright,” the Crewman replied his voice thick with hesitancy. “Well, at least we are finally getting something. I’m going to stay here and send out a series of messages to your hippocampus to stimulate it. See if we can’t get some memories to release.”
“Very well,” Vang said, trying his best to keep his frustration to himself.
It sounded like this would take longer than he thought. He really needed answers to what had led to the Maxem’s destruction sooner rather than later. Vang wished he could just mentally push Crewman Gynoor into getting faster results like he normally did with his Coercion Dome-ni. But this was a delicate procedure, and it wasn’t Gynoor’s cooperation as much as Vang’s own that was needed for results. That fact was the most frustration part of all. He didn’t like that his own body was working against him like this.
It took fifteen minutes for the first clear image to come, which was a memory of him zipping around in a star fighter and engaging in a hellish skirmish with pirates not even a full year after joining the Legion. That memory then led to a merry game of hopping around forward and backward in time over the one hundred and eight-six years of Ko-tus Vang’s life, most of the memories were centered on his seventy-nine years in the Legion, but not one was of his missing time on the Maxem.
After half an hour of the dizzying journey down memory lane, Vang spoke up. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Why can’t I access my most recent memories on the Maxem?”
Vang felt the weight of Gynoor’s fingers leave his head and he heard the man’s heavy sigh. “They may not want to show themselves.”
“There’s still some swelling in that part of the brain,” Caretaker Kessler’s voice spoke up and it startled Vang. He had forgotten Kessler said he would remain in the room in case there were complications, but he had been quiet and Vang had been too focused on what he and Gynoor had been attempting to do. “Until it’s gone, you might not be able to access them at all, and I’m surprised you have been able to get as much as you have.”
“We need answers,” Vang snapped, feeling the end of his patience fray.
“I understand that, Admiral, but it may require another treatment, or more before we are able to get the brain to cooperate,” the Caretaker said in a polite, but stern tone.
“What if we used the halo?” Gynoor’s hesitant voice spoke up.
“That might do more damage. That’s why I didn’t even suggest it. Until the swelling is completely gone, I do not feel comfortable using that device.” Caretaker Kessler replied with a dismissive tone.
Vang jumped on Gynoor’s suggestion as a possible solution to their problem. “Let’s try it.”
“Admiral, I cannot condone the use of–”
“Caretaker, I understand you are just doing your job,” Vang interrupted the man, “but so am I. We have almost no information about our invader, or what happened to the Maxem, or where the ghost ship is now. Our ability to face and neutralize this invader before it attacks again may very well depend on the speed in which I can access my memories. So we will use the halo immediately. And I absolve you of any responsibility of what might happen because of its use.”
The room around Vang was deathly silent for a moment, but Kessler finally responded in a clipped tone. “Very well. This may take a few minutes. I need to send for it and set it up.”
Vang waved an impatient hand. “Do what you need to, but make it quick.”
He waited exactly twenty-two minutes before Kessler gently lifted his head and slipped a cold metal band around the Admiral’s crown. A moment’s adjustment, and Vang felt the thin circlet tighten around his forehead and back of the head. The movement and contact sent jolts of pain through him, but it was the bright explosion of white light in his mental vision that momentarily took his breath away when the device had been switched on.
“There it’s activate. Crewman, you may resume your efforts,” Kessler replied from a distance. He must have backed away to give Gynoor room to work.
Once again, Vang felt the finger tips of the Crewman touch the top of his head. It didn’t take long at all this time for a mental image to appear in Vang’s mind. Other than the flash of brilliant light, Vang could not tell the mental link device was on. But he had seen them used before. He knew that those in the room would now see a holographic display of anything that entered his mentalscape on a portable terminal. Even more importantly, the halo would be sending micro-electric pulses to his brain ever few seconds to help the Mind Bender stimulate activity. It should, in theory, be able to jar loose any memories hiding in his brain, even with the swelling that remained.
The memory that came to him now was when he’d been sitting in his office and Captain Leonid had come in to tell Vang about the distress beacon from Bezmore Six. They were getting closer. Vang could see the hawk like facial features of the Captain, and he felt the sadness at loosing a good officer and a potential successor.
“What sort of distress is the trading post in?” Vang heard his own voice talking to the late Captain.
“It was just the emergency beacon that was activated. There was no message with it.”
“Nothing at all? Not even an attached data stream?” Vang heard himself ask. It sounded weird to hear his voice not only in his mind, but in the room as well as it played out the halo’s account of the memory.
Vang mentally stopped the memory to speak. “This is closer, but still not what I’m looking for.”
Gynoor repositioned his fingers once again. “I can actually feel a retracted memory cluster in that part of your mind. It’s all bundled up like a child retreating after being attacked. I’ve seen this before. It happens in severe head trauma. Sometimes it’s too damaged to access at all, but often times, I have found that retracted memories just need a little coaxing.”
“How do I do that?” Vang asked.
“You don’t. It’s somethings I have to do. Now that I’ve located the cluster we need, I”m going to go to work on it. This may take some time.”
Vang stopped a sigh from escaping his lips as he lay there unable to do a thing to move things along. His only option was to simply lay there while strange colors played across his mentalscape as Crewman Gynoor silently applied his talent to Vang’s mind.
Almost ten minutes of complete silence had passed in the room before the Crewman finally spoke up. “I think I have it!”
And then a moment later, an image appeared to Vang. He was on the bridge of the Maxem. Captain Leonid was standing ramrod straight at the center of the bridge with a half moon of officers at consoles surrounding him, but his attention was to an officer to his right. The lead science officer of the Maxem, in fact, and the officer was giving his report on the destroyed space station orbiting Bezmore Six just like Vang remembered.
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“I’ve analyzed several larger pieces of the debris field and I have a signature of the weapon that destroyed the space stations, and…” he stopped hesitant to continue.
“Well? What is is?” Leonid barked.
“Maybe you and the Admiral should see this for yourself, Captain,” the scientist said, and in a moment the data from the scientist console was sent to the large view screen.
And there for them all to see was the mirrored image of the scientist’s work station. There it showed the data graph of the signature comparison between what was found at the space station debris field and what was recorded on the Xlero right before the power outage caused by the ghost ship.
“What are we looking at?” Leonid asked.
But just like the first time he lived it, Vang didn’t need the scientist to explain, he knew exactly what he was seeing. And just like in that moment, Vang was filled with dread.
“The first is from the data recorded from the Xlero with their encounter from the Ghost Ship. The second is from what I got off the debris from the space station,” the scientist answered.
The heavy silence that followed felt just as suffocating as he relived the memory. The sudden tension that had risen on the bridge wasn’t in the relived memory, but Vang could remember it just the same. He could feel it in his body and almost taste it on his tongue as he looked into all the faces on that bridge.
A wave of sorrow swept through him as he remembered that these men before him only now resided in memories. Right now, this memory. The worst part was he didn’t even know most of the men’s names, but that was the downside of being the Supreme Commander of the Legion and constantly moving from one ship to another or simply working at his main office at the White Palace. He could not possibly get to know them all. But he knew they were Legion, and he would honor them as he did all men who died under his command.
This was when his memory had stopped before. He had not been able to see past this point, and Vang half expected the memory to end again. But it did not. After the silent pause as each man on the bridge had momentarily contemplated the horrible truth that their Empire had been invaded, the memory continued.
Vang had been the one to speak up first, he now remembered the thoughts running through his head in that moment. His men would need firm direction to keep them focused on the immediate problem, instead of roaming off into their wildest fears. So he was quick to give it, before the fear had time to set in.
“I know this is distressing news, and I certainly would love to know how this happened, but for now, we need to find that ship. That is our priority. The rest we will figure out when we can.” Vang abruptly turned to address the scientist. “I want scans run for this entire sector looking for the specific signature of the ghost ship. I know it will take a while, but perhaps we can get a trace of where it’s gone.”
“Yes, Admiral,” the scientist replied as he turned back to his console, but Vang had already turned to the communications officer to give him orders.
“I want an alert put out to any ships in this sector whether they be Legion or Vanguard. Let them know of this new threat, send them all the information we have on the ghost ship, what little there is. But make sure to tell them not to engage. Just sent us a hail so we know where the ship is.”
“Yes, Admiral,” the communication officer said.
Vang was already pivoting to give his attention to Leonid. “Captain, I want you to-” but he hadn’t been able to finish before the communications officer interrupted with a tense voice.
“Sirs, I can’t get a call out. Our signal is being jammed.”
“What?” Vang and Leonid said at once.
But before they could get a response from the officer, the scientist spoke up with an urgent tone. “I just picked up another signature for the ghost ship signature, and it’s close.”
Vang and Leonid both whipped their heads toward the scientist and the view screen in front of him.
“How close?” Leonid asked.
Vang had moved closer to the scientist’s view screen to get a better look. It showed a spectrum map of the surrounding space. A brilliant red oblong spot was lit up just on the other side of the space station debris field. It couldn’t be more than a eight hundred feet from the current position of the Maxem.
The Vang in the memory seemed to go rigid and a terrible suspicion from the real Vang rose in his mind. He heard his voice ask. “Is that a trace trail, or is that the actual ship?”
The scientist tapped on the screen and another data stream came up. He read through it a moment, and then said. “According to this, the ping back is far too strong to be a trace trail. It’s the real thing.”
“They’ve been there the whole time and we didn’t see them?” The alarm in the Vang’s voice was clear.
“The ship is not showing on the visual spectrum. I wouldn’t have even found it if we hadn’t been scanning for it specifically.”
Vang gave Leonid a sharp look. The Captain didn’t need any further prompting. “Ready weapons,” he said to the officer to the far left. Leonid then addressed Vang. “Should we try to communicate first?”
“Comms are jammed, which is communication enough for me. We tried a plasma blast and mark 12’s before. None of it worked, so I want you to give them everything we have.”
Leonid raised an eyebrow, “Everything, Admiral?”
“You have your orders.”
“Yes, sir,’ Leonid replied and he turned back to the weapon’s officer. “You heard the Admiral.”
“Yes, sirs,” was the man reply as he touched at his console.
A moment passed before there was a golden stream of light zipping through space toward the empty space where the spectrum map claimed the ghost ship sat invisible to their eyes. That stream was companied by three more golden streams. All four forward plasma cannons at full strength. The streams pierced the seemly empty space, but they did not continue on to the other side of the space or seem to hit any object. The streams simply seemed to be stopped by an invisible wall. It confirmed, at least to Vang, that the ghost ship was indeed there.
“Send out the mark 4’s, 6’s, and 12’s. I want them all concentrated on that signature,” the memory Vang barked.
The weapon’s officer threw the Admiral a questioning look. That was their entire missile payload. But the officer did as he was told. A moment later a barrage of green projectiles raced across the gap between the Maxem and the space the plasma cannon stream’s seemed to just stop at. The green projectiles managed to make it past the end of the plasma streams, but then they each appeared to fizzle out and disappear. All three hundred and twenty two of them.
“Stop,” the memory Vang said. His voice edged with rage. “How the yavit is that even possible? That’s enough firepower to nuke a star system.”
“Sir, the plasma cannon fuel cells are getting low. Do you want to keep the streams going?”
The memory Vang seemed to think about it, and then he shook his head. “No. Shut them down.”
There was no point. He had hoped that a concentrated effort with everything they had would pierce whatever shielding these beings had, but it was like their weapons had no effect whatsoever. It was a terribly troubling thought. The entire bridge was quiet for a long time as they all digested the turn of events.
“Send out the fighters,” the memory Vang said coldly. “Let’s see if they can get close enough to get past whatever they seem to be shielded with.”
Leonid turned to the communications officer to see the order was sent out, but before he could utter a word, the entire bridge quaked. Vang and Leonid toppled off their feet and was thrown to the floor. Several of the officers at the consoles were thrown from their seats as well.
“What was that!?” Vang yelled as he hurriedly pulled himself to his feet mostly uninjured.
But before anyone could respond, another quake happened. This time Vang was more prepared and he was able to reach out to brace himself against a nearby railing. Leonid wasn’t so lucky. He landed on his backside again.
“Sir, we have hull breaches on levels three, eleven, and twenty-six. We are venting air, and it looks like we have boarders on this level.”
“Boarders?” Vang said. That was new. “Get an assault team out to meet them! And evacuate the breached sectors. Lower and seal all the bulkheads in those areas.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Looks like we are going to finally put a face to these bastards,” Leonid said as he rose back to his feet.
“I’d sooner just kill them, but if we can get one to question to find out what they are up to, I’d be happy with that,” Vang replied.
“My guys are good. They’ll get it done.” Leonid replied with a confident air.
Vang had a doubt. If their ship was so impervious to their long range weapons, how would they fair in a close up fire fight? But that wasn’t something he needed to worry about right now. He needed to focus on the problem right in from of him.
“Leonid, I need those fighters.”
The Captain barked orders through his unity ring. The communications on the ship were still operational. That was something at least. He got off the ring and nodded to Vang, “Those bastards must have known where to hit the ship. The bay doors are damaged, but not enough. A maintenance crew should have them opened in two minutes.”
“Why didn’t you warn us of an incoming blast and boarders?” Vang asked the science officer.
The poor man looked frazzled as he peered at his console and scrolled through several data screens. “I would have if I had picked any of it up. My scanners didn’t register any incoming threats. But I’m recalibrating to see if I can’t catch any more that might come.”
Vang peered at the red blip on the screen that represented the ghost ship. From what Vang could tell, the ship had not moved at all. There also didn’t seem to be anything coming from the ship whether it be weapon’s fire or smaller craft. Frustration spiked in Vang. How could they fight an enemy they couldn’t see coming?
The sound of blaster fire and screams came from behind Vang. He looked toward the open door to the corridor beyond. It sounded like the fight was getting awfully close to the bridge.
Vang pointed at the officer nearest the door. “Close that!”
The man jumped up to hit the palm control and something thin and fast reached out, pierced the officer right through the heart. And for a long moment, Vang stared as something that looked like a black tentacle protruded from the Zahnian’s back. The tip dripped blood for a long second, and then it retracted, leaving the officer to fall backward and lifeless to the bridge deck.
That sent everyone into action as those seated sprang to their feet with their weapons drawn in an instant, but Captain Leonid was the fastest of them all as he whipped out his blaster, pushed Vang back, and stepped in front to face the new danger.
And as fast as they all were, the thing that came through the door was far faster. In a blink of an eye, the rest of the five officers and Captain Leonid dropped with surprised expressions etched on their faces right as they drew their last breaths and hit the bridge deck with hard thuds.
Vang blinked in shock at his fallen men. His heart thundered in his chest. And in that moment, the Admiral knew a fear he’d never felt before. He had always been so used to being the one to intimidate that he had forgotten the feeling of being intimidated. It made his brow sweat and every muscle in his body tense. So when the black tendril came for Vang, he couldn’t even move. He just stood and watched it come for him.