The attack had come so fast that no-one had been able to plan an escape. Lab technicians whimpered as they jumped into storage closets or crawled beneath desks. Drilling Chief Reskov hurried through the darkened walkways into the control room where he crawled behind one of the computer banks. The base lighting had gone dead, and now only the dim illumination of the star was all he could see by. Across the room, one of his junior engineers had hidden like himself, his eyes wide with terror. Reskov raised a finger to his lips, hoping the young man would be able to keep himself from panicking.
The first signal that something was wrong had come minutes earlier, when a technician had claimed that he had lost all communication with the orbital rig. There had been no warning from the crew or computer systems. According to the live data stream, the platform had simply ceased to exist. Then the security cameras caught a bright flash, and tremors shook the comet as every light and machine in the complex went dead. Reskov had tried to restart the backup power supply, but the generator had stubbornly refused to function.
Then one of the security chiefs had burst into the science tents, claiming, with panic in his voice, that his men outside were reporting shapes descending to the comet’s surface. Not believing his ears, Reskov had rushed to the lounge where hobby telescopes had been set up for the crew to amuse themselves with in their downtime. When he looked through the lens at the point in the sky that the orbital rig was supposed to occupy, the veteran chief had thought he was dreaming. The rig was there, intact, and dimly illuminated by the starlight. Not far away from it, a shadow was blotting out the distant stars; a spacecraft that absorbed no light and held its position without difficulty.
As his head swam, trying to process the nightmare, Reskov watched through the observation windows as security guards ran aimlessly through the compound’s exterior. Occasionally, one would stop and turn, raising his rifle, only to fall dead before he could fire it. Squinting at the shadows, Reskov saw flickers of movement, though never enough to make out their terrible new foe.
Now cowering for his life, tucked away into the recesses of his last refuge, Reskov prayed to his God. What Rayker had discovered in the dark corners of space had condemned them all, and he cursed his own arrogance. He knew he should have found an excuse to leave at the first opportunity, but instead he had stayed, tempted by the sin of greed. Now, Reskov realized, as he trembled in the shadows, an inexorable judgement had arrived. They would be punished for their discovery of secrets humanity was not meant to learn.
As he tried to repent, he heard the yelling of men in the connecting tunnels, immediately cut off by violent thuds. Then there was silence, broken soon after by the soft and rhythmic thump of heavy footsteps. Across from him, Reskov’s terrified neighbor clutched a wrench as the sound drew nearer.
Something entered the control room and stopped in silence. Reskov imagined the invader watching and listening, no doubt searching for the fugitives. He watched in horror as the young engineer lost his nerve, jumped up from his hiding spot and lunged forward with the wrench raised. There was a clang, followed by a sickening thud, and Reskov watched the body fall limp to the floor. He tried desperately to slow his breathing and stop the shaking of his limbs.
A gloved hand reached into his hiding space, gripping him tightly as it hauled him upright with ease. He found himself face to face with a humanoid form. The figure was armored, tall and had a rifle slung to one side. A blank metallic face seemed to observe him carefully. Reskov’s eyes darted around the room, looking for any hope of escape.
On the floor, he saw the technician’s wrench bent in two. Now his fate was sealed. He was a plaything in the hands of the terrible creature, and he closed his eyes as he began to pray.
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” he stammered, “I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me,” he muttered.
When nothing happened, he summoned all his courage, and opened his eyes again. In the doorway to the control room, two more dark figures watched in silence as his captor raised a needle. It pressed the cold metal to his neck, and Reskov felt the sharp pain as it pierced his flesh. Then he felt nothing.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Jack came to a rest, panting hard, and nestled himself inside a mess of coolant pipes. He tried to think, but found himself overcome with hopelessness. No matter where he fled, they would surely find him.
“That was a good run,” Urtiga said as she sat down on a pipe, barely out of breath. “I like that you’re cultivating a healthy physical lifestyle. However, if we could go back to the discussion you abruptly put on hold—”
“Stay away from me,” Jack snarled. “I haven’t done anything to you.”
“Technically true, but—”
“What the hell do you want from me? Are you going to kill me?”
“No, not at all,” she said, as she calmly produced a silenced pistol from her jacket. “As you can see, you would already be dead.”
Jack went pale.
“The tracker that I injected into your arm,” she continued, as though she was describing their last meal, “will allow me to locate you anywhere in the galaxy. I can also run much faster than you, so let’s put aside any of this running and hiding silliness. Also, I wouldn’t try to remove it either, because it will explode—taking out most of… you.”
“I didn’t tell anyone! I swear I didn’t say a thing!”
Urtiga nodded as though she understood. “I’m sure that’s true. Just take a moment. Try to control your breathing, get yourself together, and then we can talk about it.”
Jack tried to stop his head from spinning, anxious as he was not to upset the armed, and clearly dangerous woman.
“Let’s start with fundamentals,” Urtiga continued. “I’m giving you this advice for free because I kind of like you and if you survive, I want you to grow and develop as a healthy human being. I really mean that.”
If I survive? Jack thought.
“Unless you are a billionaire, rock star or cartel leader, charming young women do not fall out of the sky into your lap, promising you everything you want to hear. Not for a guy like you. Any girl who does that has an agenda, and it certainly will not include your best interests. The smart move in that situation is to walk away. I hope you commit that advice to memory, because I’m guessing that kind of braindead optimism is what lead you to Rayker in the first place. Am I right?”
Jack didn’t respond.
“So anyway, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, I am not really in the ‘bodyguard’ business. Fortunately for you, I am in the ‘saving humanity’ business. Honestly, this may just be the luckiest day of your life.”
She waited expectantly, but Jack didn’t feel particularly inclined to voice his thoughts on the matter.
“In my business,” she said eventually, “you are what we technically refer to as a ‘bad guy’. A bad guy, Jack Fenway,” she repeated when he still refused to respond.
He shook his head. “I never hurt anybody.”
“You transport things for Allana Rayker. She is the nastiest piece of work on this side of the Orion nebula. You facilitate the evil that she commits. The wages of sin are death, Mr. Fenway.”
Jack shook his head as he felt anger clouding his mind. “You have no clue what I had to go through to get by in this screwed up world. I didn’t have a choice.”
“I don’t really care. The laws of physics don’t adjust themselves because you were having a bad day. But have no fear, because I am one of the good guys, and I am going to help you get out of your predicament. Now, Mr. Fenway, did you recently transport something for Miss Rayker that you should not have transported?”
He felt himself calm a little as raw curiosity began to take over. “What was it?” he asked quietly.
“A bomb. A very, very destructive bomb, that my better-educated colleagues affectionately call a ‘plate-cracker’, if that gives you an idea of the magnitude of energy that I’m talking about.”
“Plate?” Jack’s mind swam. “Like an armor plate?”
“Think bigger. Orders of magnitude bigger.”
“Like… tectonic?” He shook his head. “That’s not possible. Nobody has that kind of technology.”
“No, they don’t. It is an alien technology, as you probably suspected when you opened that container.”
“Wha- how do you know I opened it?”
“Doesn’t matter—please listen carefully. Thousands of years before human civilization emerged, an advanced race of aliens inhabited the surrounding stars. Theirs was not a healthy society, because they fought a catastrophic war that left an enormous amount of unexploded ordinance littered across the ancient battlefield. My job is to clean up that incredibly dangerous garbage. When you made that delivery, you made my job much more difficult.
“As we discussed earlier, the Helvetic League is a house of cards, incapable of learning from their mistakes. Now that their military power has faded, peace and order is maintained by a delicate balance of agreements between a few dozen mega corporations. By making that delivery, you handed a game-changing piece of technology to one of those corporations, who will certainly reverse engineer it to build themselves a war machine the likes of which the stars shudder to recall. There will be another war, but this time, billions will die.”
Jack leaned himself back and banged his head against a steel strut. This could not be happening.
Urtiga leaned down, looking him straight in the eye. “I am here to prevent that, and I’m pretty good at my job,” she said sternly. “But I will need your help, Jack. It’s really going to suck. You might die. I’m not really leaving you a choice. Shall we go and get you cleaned up?”