MBryO: The Escape (13 page)

He sensed intelligence in the female, but she was neither mutant, nor clone.

She was not sentient, possessing no psy-talent whatsoever. But she had glided through the air to slide her arms around the other one and propel him to this ridge. She had managed to stay just ahead of the dangerous MBryO drones, Terran Guards and the strange inhabitants of the city on the horizon.

He respected her desire to live; it equaled his own!

Hiding in the rocks up above, Nameless had watched as, tirelessly, she collected a pile of branches and limbs. Then using the ledge as a natural foundation, she constructed the lean-to. Nameless had admired her fortitude as, breathing heavily, she tugged the limp body of the other one up the path and into the safety of the nest she had built.

Gently, Nameless’ psy-talent had probed the minds of those on the ledge below. The man’s mind was shrouded in darkness. If not for the sound of his blood pumping through his veins, Nameless would have thought him dead.

He felt the relief of the female when she decided, as he had, that the other one would live. The man’s psy-talent had over-extended itself and needed rest to heal itself!

Worn out from the events of the previous two days, the female had curled up beside the man and fell into a deep sleep.

No so, Nameless!

He had spent too many hours caged inside the confines of a metal pen. He intended to doze in the rays of the warm sunlight and savor the taste of his freedom for as long as possible.

And, as long as it brought no threat to him, he would pay his debt to the humans on the ledge down below, by standing guard over them.

His liquid black eyes looked out toward the edge of the brown desert lying off in the distance. It looked deserted and peaceful. Turning his head, he looked back toward the city skyline in front of him, searching for any sign that his father had discovered their whereabouts.

So far there had been no sign of Terran guards or MBryO drone ships. But Nameless knew that his father was a dangerous man. He would allow nothing to stand in the way of building an army of sentient soldiers, much like the renowned Xenaclon warriors of the past.

Maxim would not give up until he found, and made an example of those, arrogant enough to invade the sanctity of MBryO UNIX and liberate his children.

Nameless admired the ingenuity of the female. She had created a warm nest for the two of them. For now, it would prove successful in hiding them from their enemies.

But he knew they couldn’t stay there forever. The humans would need to find a more permanent hiding place if they were to stay out of his father’s clutches.

So until the man awakened, Nameless would stay on the ledge.

Just in case!

His dark eyes narrowed inscrutably, as Elias watched the bleeping red dot on the screen. His mental shields were up, to keep from alarming the psy-talented menagerie buckled in the sleep beds behind him. Whether it was a reaction from the excitement of escaping Maxim Bryant, or sheer boredom from the extended trip, they were all nestled in the arms of Morpheus.

A glance at the mirror above his head assured him that he was the only one on board still awake. Even Joshua had found a place back to bed down.

Elias didn’t envy him his spot, though. The only cot available had been the one beside Bear. And the snores coming from that hairy mutant eclipsed even the irritatingly canned voice messages coming from the ship’s avatar.

It should have taken them no more than two days to reach Nyla 6. But they were already a day behind due to the fact that the space-hopper was so heavily overloaded. She was moving slow and the helm was unwieldy, making them sitting ducks for any space pirate looking for an easy score. But, right now, pirates were the least of their problems.

They had detected the presence of a fleet of MBryO drone ships as soon as they entered the little known Pyguliian Galaxy. A drone ship had spotted them and gave chase. It hadn’t been close enough to fire on them, but had succeeded in running them toward one of the many satellites in the small planetary system.

Right now, they were hiding behind a small moon, caught in the gravitational pull of an uninhabited planet about the size of Terra.

The hexagon shaped drone ship was one of the DOD’s most elite aircraft. Top-of-the-line, and armed with a cloaking device, the sleek stealthflyer had followed them inside the galaxy and was going planet to planet, systematically searching for them. Elias knew it was just a matter of time before he found them.

To make matters worse, the red bleeps on the sonar screen assured him that the drone ship had alerted the rest of the armada to their location. An entire squadron of drone ships was hovering just outside the approximate location where they would emerge from the cloudy nebula, effectively blocking their exit.

Elias shut down the space-hopper’s engines allowing the natural gravitational pull of the planet to keep them trapped in position behind the small moon.

Melara had discovered the small uninhabited planetary system during her first flight from MBryO. When their spaceship had come under fire from MBryO drone ships, Melara had flown inside the dust ridden galaxy to hide.

The nebula wasn’t located on any star chart or documented in any computer bank. And the consistency of its thick gaseous atmosphere was perfect if a ship needed to hide from an armada of drone ships.

Since hiding inside the cloudy veil had worked the first time, Melara had programmed the route into the space ship’s onboard computer for the return trip.

Unfortunately, the squadron of drone ships must have been scouring the system for the cloned escapees. The armada had simply backtracked to the place where they had lost the shuttle, hoping to pick up their trail again. Now the whole squadron was alerted to their presence inside the nebula, and had camped out, blocking their escape.

“As I see it, you only have two options.”

Ignoring the mirror above his head, Elias swung his captain’s chair around to look at the owner of the frail, feminine voice.

Once, she had been deemed the most beautiful girl in the Xenaclon nation, with her peach colored complexion, long golden hair that flowed over her shoulders, and crystalline blue eyes. Now, Freezhia was just a pale shadow of the person she had been in her youth. She was like a faded picture that had been photo-copied too many times. Dull and washed out.

But at this moment in time, she was awake and alert, strapped protectively into the medi-bed. Not trusting himself to disguise his relief, Elias swung back around to face the console.

“It’s good to see you, Freezhia,” his voice sounded thick with emotion. “I was worried you weren’t going to ever wake up.”

“I almost didn’t! Thank you, Elias the Strong, for all you’ve done over the years, to watch over and protect my children and myself.”

“It has been my greatest duty…and my greatest defeat, my liege! If not for me…you would not have been captured that day on Ophilliam Beha!”

“You did everything you could, my friend.” Her tone was laden with sadness. “How were we to know that we would be betrayed by our very own? My brother…”

“Is dead!” Elias assured her roughly.

His lips tightened at the memory of just how violent a death it had been. One delivered by his own hands. After the death of their parents, Fredrico and Freezhia, twins, had ruled the Xenaclon nation fairly and justly. Until, Fredrico had sold them out to their enemies. He had foolishly thought that turning his sister over to the Terran Guard and delivering the Xenaclon army into a trap would ensure his own immunity from interstellar justice.

He had been wrong! A traitor to his people and branded a war criminal by the Terran government, Fredrico had deserved the justice meted out to him.

Elias allowed her a few minutes to digest the woeful news of her beloved twin’s demise.

“The last thing I remember…was being wheeled into the laboratory for another of Maxim’s extraction processes,” her voice trailed away without finishing her sentence.

“Don’t think about it,” he said gruffly, the sight of her lying lifeless and prostrate upon Maxim’s laboratory table still fresh in his own mind. He knew that it would have been the last procedure Freezhia’s frail body would have endured.

“Why don’t you tell me what those options are, instead, my liege?”

“Call me Freezhia, Elias! I am queen of nothing. Nor do I ever wish to be again.” There was a trace of amusement in her tone.

Elias could accept that. Mentally shrugging, he admitted that she had never been ‘queen’ in his thoughts anyway. From the first time he had seen her, parading through their village atop her favorite mount and leading the line of battle scarred warriors behind her, he had only thought of her as ‘beloved’.

“Umm…well we could always sneak back out the way we came in,” she stated the obvious. “Hopefully, your flying skills will prove capable of avoiding the drone ship that tailed us in here. Then we could back track our flight path and find an alternate route around the nebula, altogether.”

“What’s the other option?” Elias asked, not because his warrior’s mind hadn’t already determined their available options, but just to keep her talking. For the moment he let himself bask in the sound of her voice, frail though it was.

Setting her free of her captor had been his goal for so long, that just being here with her was the like heady purple wine they used to drink in the dining halls of Xenaclon.

“We can use the nebula’s gravitational pull to make our way to the edge of the dust cloud; then use our rockets thrusters to sneak through the drone ships. With the element of surprise on our side, maybe we can float past them before realize it is us.”

“And if we are discovered?”

“We hyperspeed it out of there as fast as we can.”

He mulled over her logic in his head.

“Well, we will never make warp drive in this old boat, overloaded as she is. And I’m not a green Xenaclon cadet anymore, filled with more bravado than good sense; I will not make the mistake of underestimating the Terran Guard! So floating past an armada of drone ships is probably out of the question.”

His irony wasn’t lost on her. There was more inflection in what he wasn’t saying, than in what he did. Elias already knew the shuttle wasn’t capable of making it through the armada. Any Terran drone with descent speed capability would be upon them in seconds.

His hands frantically reprogramming the computer dials in front of him. “So that takes outrunning them out of the equation.”

Looking up at her through the overhead mirror, he grinned wryly.

“It looks like retreat is the best option.” He settled deeper into the pilot’s seat and pulled the helm closer toward him, preparing for action. “Fasten your seat belts! It’s going to be a wild ride from here on out!”

He flipped the aft rudder, dipping the wing of the ship and allowed the moon’s gravitational pull to swing the ship around soundlessly. Once in position, his agile fingers, nimbly turned on the rocket thrusters for a few seconds, and then switched them off again. The ship began gliding toward their point of entry. He repeated the process several more times, gently coasting through the colorful dust cloud.

A glance at the sonar told him there were no bleeping red dots close to their position. But he knew that a least one stealthflyer was between them and their exit, searching for them.

Elias had a bad moment when the stealthflyer navigated too close to their position. He held his breathe when the drone ship chose a navigational flight path that took them on the other side of one the planets close to them. In a game of cat and mouse, he steered the space-hopper through the noxious atmosphere, hovering a few hundred meters above the strange red soil that seemed to cover the entire planet.

Keeping his eye on the sonar, he waited until the bleeps were far away from the red planet and then using his thrusters once more, continued to guide the ship through the nebula.

He could only hope the shuttle wasn’t flying into an ambush with a squadron of cloaked stealthflyers waiting for them on the other side, armed and ready.

The gliding ship finally reached the edge of the nebula.

Elias detected no bleeping red dots on the sonar screen. Holding his breath, he started the powerful engines. He watched the reflection of the jet wash streaking behind them in the mirrors attached to the outside of the ship. The nebula was too cloudy to see if the drone ship was on their tail.

Mentally crossing his fingers, Elias pushed the space-hopper into gear. The overloaded ship shuddered violently and then lunged forward, as the hyperdrive engaged. Taking a chance that they wouldn’t be shot out of the sky by MBryO drone ships, he accelerated away from the nebula.

As Freezhia had indirectly pointed out, taking the direct route to Nyla 6 was now out of the question. He wasn’t willing to take the chance that they would lead the Terran Guard back to the small planet. The trajectory they were on would take them light years out of their way, but he would rather be safe than sorry.

The space station was the perfect hiding place for what was left of the Xenaclon race. And if his suspicions were correct, that had been the intention of Pax’s ancestors from the very beginning.

Elias wasn’t buying the deserted crew theory anymore. Nyla 6 had fallen off the radar because someone high up in the DOD had made sure it had.

When Melara had activated that computer beacon by mistake, the mission had been exposed. The fates had allowed him to intercept that packet of information before Maxim Bryant had seen it. If the clone master had gotten his hands on that information the starbase would he a thing of the past, and those seeking refuge there would be back at MBryO UNIX by now, chained and persecuted.

Getting Freezhia and his passengers to the safety of Nyla 6 was Elias’ top priority right now. As one of the only remaining Xenaclon warriors left, it was his duty to protect his queen at all costs. Skirting the nebula and playing hide and seek with the armada would add days to their trip, but it was the best plan he could come up with at the moment.

Guiding the nose of the ship deeper into space, he began to plot his way around the squadron of drone ships looking to destroy them. His cargo was much too precious to put in harm’s way.

It would take a couple of extra days making their way back to Nyla 6. And it would take even longer to make his way back to Terra. But, Elias swallowed his impatience and determined that he would do what he had to, to keep everyone safe.

Even, if he had to abandon his friends and comrades, Melara Sivanza and Pax Vitar; leaving them alone and at the cruel mercy of Maxim Bryant!