Start (28 page)

With
that heavy thought, he briefly closed his eyes and then sat down
roughly in his seat.

He
waited.

But
this time he did not fall asleep.

He sat
there and he thought and he planned and he pleaded with the
universe for things to turn out right.

Cadet
Nida Harper

She
kept falling in and out of consciousness. But it didn't seem to
matter. The presence in her mind commanded the ship, and there was
little Nida could do but simply sit there and watch.

Yet as
time passed, slowly her attention returned to her. In scraps at
first, and it was hard won, but eventually she could string
together enough concentration to really consider what had just
happened to her.

She
had broken out of the Academy hospital, stolen this vessel, and was
now travelling at many times light speed, back to a planet she had
only visited once but now called home.

The
more Nida pondered those facts, the more they scared
her.

Who
knew what forces were after her, and far more chillingly, who knew
what the presence in her mind had really done to everyone at the
Academy. Yet whenever she questioned that fact, the presence always
reassured her that nobody had been hurt.

But
the fact was she had left the Academy and Earth far behind her
now.

She
was on her own in this tiny cruiser.

Nida
had very rarely travelled in spaceships. She'd certainly been in
her fair share of hover transports over the years, but she had
never had cause to embark on interstellar travel. In fact, her
recent mission to Remus 12 was the furthest she'd ever been from
Earth.

Yet
now, as she stared at the view screen before her and the black
depths of space streaked with the lines and speckles of stars, she
felt as if she had seen this exact sight millions of times
before.

It was
such an alien sensation that it did not take her long to realise it
was not hers.

It
belonged to the presence in her mind.

Home.
All it wanted was to get home.

That
one word seemed to calm her more than anything else could, because
it focused the presence in her mind. And when the presence was
focused, its influence on Nida lessened.

She
tried to talk to it, but there was little it would say beyond the
fact they were returning home. Yet occasionally, and quite
frighteningly, it would point out that if they did not return fast
enough, they would become corrupted.

At the
word corrupted, she would always see the same visions flash before
her eyes. Walking through the halls of the Academy, destroying the
building as she passed. Or standing on the surface of Remus 12 and
watching the entire planet break up into dust and stone, and swirl
around her in a vortex of destruction.

That
was what the entity meant by corrupted.

And it
scared Nida senseless.

As
time wound on, and the days ticked by, slowly she learnt more about
the entity.

It
seemed it could only speak certain words, and when it tried to
convey other information, it did so with half remembered dreams and
contorted imagery.

So, in
a fugue of dreams, visions, and sleepy hours spent staring at the
view screen, time wound on.

As it
did, she truly awakened as her natural faculties returned to her,
until the sharpness of her attention and focus rivalled that which
it had once been.

Yet
with her intelligence and focus came a fear far more exquisite then
she had experienced before. Now she had the faculties to understand
exactly what was happening to her, it crippled her.

All
she could do was sit there and stare at the view screen and wait,
wait for the ship to reach Remus 12.

She
had to get there. She had to return the entity to the
statue.

She
had to do it before they became corrupted.

Occasionally Nida tried talking to herself, or humming, or
listening to music, but nothing would distract her.

She
did try, however, to use the ship's communication functions to get
in contact with the Academy, or to scan all frequencies for any
news.

She
couldn't do it.

The
computer would block her out, and all too soon, she realised the
entity in her mind did not want her to make contact.

Because it could not be stopped.

If she
tried to reach the Academy, they would find out where she was. If
they found out where she was, they would stop her. They would
prevent Nida and the entity from returning to Remus 12.

Feeling far more trapped than she ever had in her life, Nida
somehow managed to soldier on.

As the
minutes ticked by into hours, she did not crumple her hands over
her eyes and burst into sorrowful tears.

She
simply sat there and she tried to think about what would happen
next.

After
she got to the planet. After she returned the entity to its
home.

. . . 

Then
what? Could she go back to the Academy?

Though
Nida had always been an optimistic and hopeful girl, she doubted
it.

In
fact, she could paint an almost perfect picture of what would
happen to her. She'd be remanded into custody, studied, and quite
possibly kept in a laboratory for the rest of her life.

Okay,
the Academy was a lot more ethical than that, but her future would
not be bright.

Trying
not to think of it, she distracted herself by reading the
navigational data displayed on the ship's primary console. It
charted a path through the various solar systems they were yet to
traverse on their way to Remus 12.

She
remembered from her time aboard the United Galactic Coalition heavy
cruiser Orion that Remus 12 was very close to the outer border of
the United Galactic Coalition. In fact, it was in an area that had
once seen very heavy activity by the Kore Empire.

While
the United Galactic Coalition was by far the most powerful group in
all of the galaxy, it still had adversaries. Though thankfully
there had been no open hostilities for years, occasionally there
were skirmishes, and areas like the solar system Remus 12 belonged
to, were not considered 100 percent safe.

Occasionally you could run across Kore scouting ships. Far
more frightful though, very occasionally you could run into the
Barbarians.

The
Barbarians were a tightly organised alliance of about 10 alien
races from the far rim of the Milky Way. Though they were a small
group, they were incredibly powerful.

While
the Kore were the primary threat to the United Galactic Coalition,
the Barbarians, in many ways, were far more dangerous. They had an
insatiable desire for technology, and would often engage in
industrial espionage, peaceful or violent, to glean the secrets of
new Coalition devices.

Worse
than that, the Barbarians were not above capturing passing
transports and survey vessels to kidnap the crew, steal the cargo,
and strip down the vessel for parts.

They
were vicious, underhanded, and desperate. By all means, a deadly
combination of traits. And when you factored in that the two main
races of the Barbarians were two of the most violent alien species
in all of the Milky Way, you would begin to understand how truly
and terrifyingly dangerous the Barbarians were.

Still,
when Nida had been aboard the Orion, she'd learnt there hadn't been
any Barbarian or Kore activity in this system for a very long
time.

She
held onto that fact now. Tightly. The last thing she could put up
with right now was another surprise.

“Come
on, come on, come on,” she said to herself, her quiet voice
nonetheless echoing through the small cockpit of the
ship.

Though
the ship barely had any amenities, and just enough to keep one
person alive, that fact alone did not bother her. She did not seem
to need much food; the blue light infesting her palm somehow kept
her energised.

Still,
incapable of distracting herself further, Nida pushed up from her
seat, and walked all of about a meter to the tiny receptacle that
manufactured food. She pressed several buttons, and soon got a glob
of grey substance known as a complete nutritional mass.

She
stood with her back pressed against one of the cramped walls as she
nibbled at the unappetizing food, picking at bits of the lump with
the tips of her fingers and considering them with little enthusiasm
before popping them in her mouth.

As she
stood there, the presence stirred, and for about the millionth time
it told her they were heading home.

Home.

That
one word lifted Nida's world, and suddenly the terrible food she
was eating tasted like the very ambrosia of the gods.

Her
levity would not last.

For
despite the entity's assurance, they would not get home.

Carson
Blake

The
past several days had been hell. He'd paced this enormous and
lonely ship looking for answers. Searching his mind, searching the
computer's records, doing whatever he could to come up with a
strong, airtight plan. But the problem was, his memory could only
tell him so much, and computer files could tell him even
less.

Though
of course there were various mentions of peculiar entities over the
years, nothing like the thing that now resided in Nida.

At
least there were occasional mentions though, and Carson whiled away
the hours by poring over them, separating out each fact and
analysing it as if it held the secrets of the universe.

When
he wasn't accessing the computer's scant knowledge on strange
entities, he was using the gym. He ran, he lifted weights, and he
distracted himself by keeping fit.

It was
somewhere around the third day, when they entered an area bordering
the Remus system, that the computer alerted him to a glitch with
the scanners.

Frowning, he checked the readings on the panel in his
armrest.

Immediately he jumped to his feet. “Computer, upgrade defences
now,” he snapped.

“No
immediate threat has been detected,” the computer countered in a
dull, electronic tone.

“Upgrade defences now,” he snapped again.

The
computer did not question him this time; it simply set the ship on
a yellow alert. The usually bright light of the bridge glowed with
a yellow tinge, and a warning tone filtered through the room. He
could also hear the hum of the engines change as their output
increased.

“The
ship's defensive plating has been activated. Localised force fields
are in place, and inertia barriers have been generated.”

“Inertia barriers?” Carson questioned.

“This
ship is equipped with an experimental device designed to alter its
gravitational properties and exploit these to increase or decrease
inertia, affecting any incoming objects.”

He
blinked, impressed, then he returned to the ever-present task at
hand.

Swiping at the sweat collecting over his brow, he stared up at
the view screen.

And he
waited.

“No
enemy vessels have been detected, neither have the scanners picked
up any spatial deformities,” the computer explained to him
patiently.

“Just
keep the defences upgraded,” he snarled back.

“Yes,”
the computer responded.

He
could take the time to explain his logic to the computer, but it
wasn't necessary. It would only follow his orders, and though it
seemed to question him now, he could turn that function off with a
single command.

Taking
several stiff steps back, he whirled on his foot and walked across
to one of the sleek panels embedded in the wall. As he typed
something into it, he frowned at the readings that played across
the panel's small screen.

Though
the past several days had convinced Carson there was so much he
couldn't do, there were still certain things he had
mastered.

And
this was one of them.

Even
though the computer remained convinced there was nothing out there,
Carson knew better.

He'd
seen scanner malfunctions like this before, always in areas on the
rim of Coalition space.

He
knew what they meant, and it wasn't that the scanner array needed
recalibrating.

His
few years as a lieutenant and the commander of the Force had
brought him against the Barbarians before, and he knew what to look
for.

The
alignment of the scanners was off by 0.5 percent, enough for the
effects of the misalignment to be almost negligible. But that
wasn’t the only fact that now saw Carson rush over to a panel that
gave him direct access to the ship’s weapons.