Into the Black: Odyssey One (24 page)

“All right Savoy, we’ll use maneuver Trojan-12. Jenkins, Mallard, don’t shoot unless you have to, move to disarm rather than incapacitate.” Hilliard decided on the spot, shuffling around as he and the others slipped into place.

As the acknowledgments echoed through the radio links, Savoy found himself tensing up as he prepared to play his part in the maneuver.

“Uh… Hi,” Savoy winced at how foolish that sounded, but forged ahead, “We come in peace…”

A single glance at the look on the faces of the two men facing him was enough to tell him that the translator had failed. Savoy was debating whether to risk asking Milla to translate for him when the choice was taken from him.

One of the gunmen uttered something unintelligible and roughly grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the lift, forcing him down. As soon as he was on the ground, Savoy put up a token resistance, drawing the attention of both gunmen, as they roughly forced him down, their weight pinning him hard. Then, seconds after the initial struggle, the weight abruptly vanished.

*****

Milla watched as the two men manhandled Savoy to the ground, stunned by the sudden violence, from a people she had thought she knew. A sudden blur of motion made her blink as her attention was captured by the two soldiers, Jenkins and Mallard, as they leapt into the fray. Jenkins’ leap launched him into what would have been a long arc that intercepted the top gunman and carried them both over a dozen meters into the shelter. Mallard limited her leap to a shallow arc that caught the second gunman low and tumbled them both to the ground, just beyond where Savoy had landed.

Just as she was about to rush into the room herself, Milla was roughly shoved aside as Hilliard dropped into the lift, allowing the fall’s kinetic energy to be absorbed into the suit. He then launched himself into a long arc that landed him fifteen meters into the shelter, his rifle swinging side to side as he searched for more hostiles.

“Clear!” Mallard said as she kneeled on her target, his rifle knocked well out of the man’s reach.

“Clear!” Jenkins crouched low over his man, his own weapon digging into the man’s neck, even as his right foot was planted solidly over the gunmen’s weapon.

“Clear!” Savoy had his hand gun out and was helping Hilliard cover the occupants of the shelter.

Major Brinks’ calm voice came over the radio, surprising Milla for a moment. “Confirmed, Miss Chans? You’re clear to enter.”

Milla nodded to no one in particular, and stepped tentatively into the room, looking nervously around. Gathering her nerve, she stepped more firmly into the shelter, looking around for someone who might be in charge. Everywhere she looked, she was met by fear, as the people cowered away from her, leaving her confused by the reaction.

Suddenly she remembered how alien the armor she was wearing actually looked, “Oh! Mr. Savoy? How do I remove this helmet?”

Savoy stepped up behind her and pointed out the release catches that sealed the helmet to the suit. Twin hisses echoed though the room as the suit pressure was balanced and Milla gently tugged the helmet off.

She looked around at the people who were all watching her now, and held up her hands in as comforting a manner as she could, “we are friends. I’m from Ranqil. We just arrived in system a few hours ago.”

One of the huddled survivors stepped forward cautiously, her face a mask that hid all but a small portion of her emotions. “You are from Ranqil?” Her voice was suspicious as she looked Milla up and down and then examined the Savoy and the others.

Milla shook her head firmly and spoke, “I am from Ranqil. These people are not. They are not from the colonies, they are of the Others.”

The woman’s face showed a distinct sign of distaste, as she looked over the soldiers in the room, “we do not want them here.”

Milla looked over her shoulder to where the soldiers were calmly waiting, their eyes scanning the crowd, even as their weapons didn’t… quite… cover the crowd. She thought about her own reactions to her rescuers shook her head. “You may not want them, but you do need them. They rescued me when my ship was destroyed by the Drasin. Now they come to rescue you, as well.”

A shiver of fear passed through the huddle mass of people at the mention of the word Drasin. Their spokesperson paused for a moment before speaking again “so the rumors were true. Few believed them to be, when we heard of the first Drasin attacks. It was a struggle to get permission to begin construction of this shelter. How many survived the attack?”

Milla swallowed before answering, “You are the only survivors that we’ve found. No life signs were detected, and there were no other signals from the planet.”

The silence in the room was palpable as Milla’s words sunk into the collective consciousness of the group. Savoy quietly cleared his throat behind Milla after a long moment, to remind her that they had things to finish.

“We have to restore power to your reactor so that we can evacuate your people.”

The woman looked disturbed, “why should we evacuate? The Drasin are gone now, we can rebuild.”

Savoy stepped in, his translator having stepped up its effectiveness after he’d had it recompile its program from the spoken words, they’d been recording. The local dialect wasn’t completely identical to that which Milla spoke, which wasn’t confusing for human ears apparently, but it had thrown the computer out of whack, for a moment.

Even as he started to speak, he was already starting to work out new algorithms’ in his mind, to enhance the translation. Dialects had always been something of a problem, but on Earth all they had to do was pre-program them and everything was fine. The system simply wasn’t designed to handle minor changes in pronunciation on the fly, like this.

Still, he’d have to worry about it later. For now, he and his team had more pressing concerns.

“I’m afraid that’s not true, Ma’am,” he told the woman, who appeared to be the leader of the ragged band, “They’re still out there. We have to get you and your people out of here before any of those drones find their way here.”

Savoy had expected more shock, but only an air of resignation followed his statement.

The crowd deflated a little, as if he’d taken away some fancy they had embraced, but the reality hadn’t been so far from their minds after all. The leader nodded after a moment then sort of half bowed to him and nodded.

“Very well. The reactor is this way,” the woman gestured to the far wall and a small door.

“Thank you, Ma’am. Mallard, Jenkins, let those two up and help me lug those power-packs over there. We should be able to jumpstart the system, if what Miss Chans said about the reactors is right.”

“I will have our engineer explain any systems necessary to you.” The woman was now exerting a command influence, confirming Savoy’s belief that she was of some importance to these people.

“Thank you, Ma’am,” he responded, keeping his tone respectful as he nodded his head to her.

The three soldiers each hefted a power-pack, casually shouldering them and walking toward the door at the far end. The local engineer stepped up to the fourth pack, gesturing helpfully as he kneeled down to carry it.

“No! Wait!” Hilliard strode towards the man as he tried to heft the power pack.

Consternation turned to a pained look as the man strained his muscles in a vain attempt to move the heavy pack. Hilliard laid a hand on the man’s shoulder and shook his head with a slight smile.

“Here, I’ll carry it;” Hilliard kneeled down and grasped the packs handles, hefting it with ease and flipping it casually over his shoulder. “It’s the suits, Sir. They have a series of strength enhancers, lead the way and I’ll bring up the rear.”

The man nodded as emotions wafted across his face, ranging from an unbelieving stare to a fascinated gaze. Finally, the man turned and lead Hilliard to the door, taking long looks over his shoulder, at the suit Hilliard wore and at the pack he carried with such ease.

The woman turned to Milla when Hilliard was out of earshot, “can they be trusted? The others are oath breakers. You know that.”

Milla took a deep breath before she continued, “I don’t know, but we have little choice, I’m afraid. And the oath breaking was a long time ago.”

“Oath breakers are oath breakers.”

“Perhaps. But, as I said, they rescued me and now they are saving you and your people. That should earn them, at least the benefit of the doubt, from us,” Milla’s face was earnest.

The older woman sighed after a moment, relenting. “Perhaps you are right.” The woman paused a moment, “what is your name? I am, or rather was, Titualar Saraf. Now I suppose, it’s just plain Saraf.”

Milla looked around her, “not to these people. You are still the Titualar of this system, to them. I am Ithan Milla Chans of the Ranqil merchant fleet. I was on an interception mission, when the task force I was assigned to was destroyed by a Drasin battle fleet.”

“The Drasin are that powerful?”

Milla nodded grimly, “they are more powerful than that, I fear. They annihilated our force with ease; our vessels had no chance against them.”

“Then we are lost. They will overrun our defences finally. Over eight millennia of peace and we end like this,” Saraf shook her head, her face sadly resigned.

Milla shook her head violently, refusing to accept that death was inevitable, and “it is not over, yet. The Five have several fleets of next generation starships nearing completion. They should put us at nearly an equal footing with what I have seen of the Drasin fleet. The era of peace has come to an end, but not our civilization.”

“What of your friends? I wasn’t aware that any of the Others had achieved dimensional travel?” Seraf nodded to the soldiers.

“They haven’t. Their technology is a puzzle to me. In many ways, their equipment is vastly inferior to ours. They have no knowledge of field manipulation, or dimensional access. Their computers are almost laughably slow, and their medical technology is archaic,” Milla stopped for a moment, her voice drifting away as she thought about the wonders, she had seen. “Yet, they translated our language in less than a day. They have software that is superior to any I have seen, and have the capability to jump between the stars in an instant.”

Saraf looked toward the door that hid Savoy and the others from her sight, “instantaneous star travel? Impressive, I admit. But I doubt if they will be of much help now that the Drasin have come.”

Milla laughed mirthlessly, her tone a bitter, yet somehow satisfied, sort of sound that Saraf didn’t recognize. “There was a Drasin vessel in your system when we arrived. A vessel of the same class that survived a full assault by six of our heaviest reconfigured combat vessels. Their one vessel, smaller than one of our trade ships, destroyed it in less the ten minutes of actual fighting. From a military standpoint, I don’t think that the Colonies have seen this much combat power, in one place, in the last twelve thousand years.”

“They are soldiers then?” Saraf’s voice was flat.

“They are. At least many of them are. In many ways, much of their ship seems dedicated to exploration and science, yet they do seem to believe in being capable of their own defence,” Milla replied with an odd smile.

The conversation between the two women was cut off when a loud hum came from the far wall and glaring emergency lights ignited around them. A moment later the four Odyssey soldiers and the local engineer stepped out of the reactor room.

Savoy headed back toward Milla. “We have the reactor back online, Miss Chans. Major Brinks is coming down in the lift now. We’ll have to prepare this group for evacuation immediately.”

Milla and Saraf nodded and turned to the rest of the survivors, calling out instructions as they walked through the group. By the time the lift had returned with Major Brinks, the survivors had already begun to organize their affairs and a rough sort of order had descended on the room.

Milla stepped forward to greet the Major when he stepped off the lift, “Major, this is Saraf,” she said, extending a hand toward the older woman. “She is the leader of these people.”

“Ma’am,” Brinks tipped his head slightly toward the woman as he surveyed the area, “may I ask how many people we are looking at?”

“Certainly, Major, there are nearly five hundred survivors here.”

Brinks swore at that, looking around as he started crunching numbers in his head. “One moment, please.”

They nodded as he switched to another channel, “Samuels, relay a query to the Odyssey. Five hundred refugees found. Orders?”

Jennifer Samuels confirmed the order so he settled back on his heels and began pondering the situation. The Odyssey was built to handle a lot more than they currently used it for, but five hundred additional lungs would stress the support systems.

The time it took for the light speed message to crawl out to the big starship, and then for its return journey, were like eons as Brinks tried to figure out what they’d do if the Odyssey couldn’t handle it.

“Standby for message from Odyssey,” Samuels said a couple minutes later.

“Roger,” Brinks told her then watched as a video window appeared on the screen.

Captain Weston looked out of the window at him, “Message received and understood. Organize the evacuation; Odyssey is dispatching remaining shuttles to help. Godspeed, Major.”

Brinks wanted to wipe the beading sweat from his forehead, but couldn’t because of the helmet, so he turned to the two women and ignored the infernal itching, “we’ll begin evacuating, as soon as possible. The Odyssey is standing by to treat any injuries and to provide succour. It’ll be cramped though.”

“They will endure,” Milla said firmly, receiving a nod from Saraf.

“We will, Major,” she said, for the first time nodding with genuine gratitude. “And on behalf of my people, I thank you for your aid.”

Brinks shook his head, “not a problem, Ma’am. Believe it or not, most of my people signed up in the hopes of getting a shot like this.”

He smiled wryly at them then his head cocked slightly as he answered a signal on another channel. “We have a clearing cut about fifty meters from the bunker topside. We need to get everybody out there, in groups of fifty to seventy people at a time.”