FACE THY ENEMY (01/16/25 *)
Before powering the ship down, Dahl engaged the infrared motion sensors and focused the forward telemetry array on the substrate, ensuring nothing could sneak up on them while they licked their wounds. Nothing would. The forward array flooded the approaching tunnels with a mixture of microwave, radar and sonic pulses. The sonic pulses scrambled raptor senses, sending them scurrying in every direction.
Later, the auto-doc reset and splinted Moss's arm, stitched the weeping lacerations on Lockspur's split scalp and sutured Dahl's face and shoulder. Before leaving the medbay, the auto-doc administered a cocktail of sedatives and anti-anxiety meds, ensuring the frazzled team slept through the next twenty hours.
Dahl nodded off in the co-pilot's seat, bare feet resting on top of the control console, listening to her favorite tunes on a set of noise canceling earbuds Lilith gave her on her last birthday. Her dreams were chaotic.
Lockspur lay in the cargo hold on a drop-down troop seat. In his lap, a datapad cycled through old photos of his long absent family. He wasn't in any. He fell asleep with a bag of sour candies he found on his console. Tears trickled down his cheeks.
Somehow, with no one seeing or hearing him, Moss stumbled out of the infirmary to a high-back chair in front of a workbench in the armory. 30 minutes later, he sat slumped over a myriad of half cleaned weapons. A bottle of weapons cleaner rolled around his chair and a dirty cleaning brush hung from his limp hand.
After many hours passed, the still weary team woke, made their way to the mess-hall, where they shared a hot meal, laughed and joked and teased and bitched and argued about having to go out again. None were in a hurry to feel the light of endless day.
Because of Moss's repeated insistence, Dahl conceded they may not be alone. As for Lockspur, he was certain someone was out there. But revealing that truth was not an option. He looked at the wreckage on a nearby monitor, believing he realized where his meeting would take place.
"We arrived late," Moss said, staring at the Hunter Gratzner wreckage on a monitor. "Whatever is out there..." He saw his teammates roll their eyes. "And there is... something out there."
"Agree to disagree," Lockspur replied, trying a little too hard to convince him they were alone.
"Whatever is out there," Moss continued, turning to Dahl with a raised brow. "It got here before we did. Now, it has the advantage and we're left playing catch up or… die." Moss's arm ached, his head pounded and the second dose of meds the auto-doc administered were dragging him down. He had little fight left to argue with.
"There's nothing out there, amigo." Lockspur assured him. His words sounded hollow and looked practiced, as if he stood in front of a mirror reading a script.
"I heard you the first time," Moss said, yawning and rubbing his eyes with balled fists. He held his good hand up, flexed his fingers, and studied his hand. Then he lowered it and continued speaking as if nothing had happened. "I'm telling you, she is real. And she is here."
Lockspur shook his head. "She's a myth; they're just stories."
"Are they?" Moss asked, more to himself than the others. "I'm not so sure."
"Why not? You're sleeping with the woman who has the answers. Or does Lilith hate pillow talk?"
Dahl's eyebrows raised in shook. "You… and Lilith?"
Moss glared at Lockspur. "That's private."
"Not anymore, amigo," Lockspur replied, and shrugged. "Sorry. Too much scotch."
Dahl's mouth hung open. She fixed him in a stare of disbelief. Moss reeled on her. "What? I'm not good enough for royalty?"
"Can we just not talk about… it?" Dahl asked.
"Good idea," Moss said, scowling and shaking his good hand as if it hurt
"If Moss believes, he heard someone out there. We have to operate on the assumption someone is out there. If we don't, we're placing ourselves in danger."
"Whatever you say, jefa." Lockspur said. "You're in charge... today."
At the end of the contentious debate, the team agreed that whatever may be out there could have played a role in the raptor attacks on them and the crash survivors. The unsettling thought left Moss and Dahl questioning whether they could complete the remaining objectives or if they should abandon the mission. Dahl and Moss agreed to continue; Lockspur decided he didn't have a choice. He was going out with or without them.
Dahl and Lockspur moved to the bridge to plan the upcoming mission, while Moss made his way to the medbay for his next round of morphine. By the time he reached the bridge, he didn't say a word about Dahl taking command. He was nursing a shattered forearm, a chunk of missing earlobe and riding a dreamy wave of morphine induced euphoria carrying him straight off to la-la land. He wouldn't have cared if a raptor ran up to the tailgate, knocked on the airlock hatch and asked for a ride off world. Shit yeah. Come on in, little raptor buddy. Let's go.
For the first time since they arrived, Moss felt like everything was smooth sailing. Sure, he saw 7 fingers on his left hand and no matter how hard he shook it, the extra 2 fingers just wouldn't come off. But hey man, that was OK, because at least those hallucinations didn't have teeth or chase him around the ship. He was done with snarling teeth and running. Too bad for him. The things in the dark had their own ideas of what came next.
"How much of that shit did the auto-doc dose him with?" Lockspur asked, watching Moss laughing and shaking his hand in front of his own face.
"Ahh… Not too much... I hope." Dahl watched Moss with a smirk.
"Think I can get a dose or ten?" Lockspur asked. "I might have a few broken ribs." He didn't, but it was worth a shot. The pain racking his guts was from a nasty case of pancreatic cancer. It twisted his belly into agonizing knots, but he brought his own meds to keep him going.
Dahl looked him over and saw no visible signs of injury. "Not likely. You don't appear to have any bones sticking out."
Lockspur looked unimpressed. "Chica, you've been around long enough to understand someone always gets hurt."
"Chica?"
"Term of endearment," he replied, waving her off.
"If you want meds, you'll have to take it up with the auto-doc. But I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you."
The auto-doc wouldn't prescribe him any meds. Besides, what he needed was palliative care and a hospice bed. But he wanted to be there for Dahl's first mission. Or perhaps he wanted to make sure she returned from her first mission.
"It doesn't matter," Lockspur said. "Lilith gave me a 50-year-old bottle of scotch. 140 proof. I was saving it for the return trip. But the way this shitshow is panning out, I doubt there will be a return trip."
"Does that mean you're going to share?"
He pushed a pair of shot glasses into the middle of the console and produced a half empty bottle. "A few rounds should take the edge off."
"Sure. That and a year on a beach at Fhloston Paradise."
Lockspur was teetering on the edge of death. He had a failed liver implant, pancreatic cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. For the first time in his 72 years, Lockspur didn't care about money. He needed time. So, when Lilith offered him a chance of getting more, a lot more, he jumped at the chance.
Moss swiveled around, fumbled something out of his wallet and held up a laminated card. "Benjamin Moss, multi-pass. Mull… tea… pass."
"No shit, Sherlock. She knows it's a mull-t-pass." Lockspur said. "Christ. He spends a week in paradise with two Arcturians twins and still has the multi-pass to prove it."
"Twins?"
"Well… more like brother and sister."
"Huh? Him." Dahl said, turning to stare at Moss.
Lockspur laughed. He saw what she was thinking. "Its not like that. Arcturian men and women are the same. Gorgeous. Statuesque. Single gender. Nymphomaniacs to the extreme." Lockspur watched him for a quick moment a d added, "Lucky bastard."
"Which?"
"Which what?"
"Gender."
"No idea. Both; Neither. Can't say either way. I've never turned one over to check. But if you need to know. You can ask Moss." He looked at Moss, still shaking his hand. "Although I suggest you wait until the hand waving thing goes away."
"Probably a good idea."
"Although I'm certain in his current condition, the riveting tale of his exploits on Phloston Paradise would be quite entertaining."
Dahl watched Moss waving his hand and added, "And descriptive."
Outside the ship, most of the Hunter Gratzner's lower hull trailed away over the horizon. The mercenary ship rested midpoint between the disconnected nose section and the tail sections jutting up over the horizon.
The Hunter Gratzner's aft sections rose out of the massive trench, touching the sky like an 800 foot tall, twisted steel skyscraper. Compared to the bridge sections, the front compartment looked more like a subcompact car parked on an aircraft carrier. The aft compartments had a combined weight of over 400 million metric tons and a length of over 2 kilometers.
Moss sat in the pilot's seat, gazing out through the dirty windscreen at the sheer amount of debris trailing off both left and right. "It's a wonder there's anything left at all," Moss said, through the windscreen and waving. Moss peered over his shoulder at Lockspur and gestured outside. "Carlos, come look. Raptors in a conga line."
Lockspur watched Moss waving out of the windscreen with a grin. "Funny," he said to himself. "This is the first time I've seen him smile in years."
"Not nice."
"No," he admitted. "But true."
Hours later, as Dahl and Lockspur readied themselves for the upcoming mission, an unsettling sense of Déjà vu crept into their minds. It all seemed so familiar. Neither of them discussed the almost debilitating sensation, but each could see the unease contorting the other's face.
Moss's arm bones had knitted together. But the mending breaks would remain weak for another 12 hours. Until then, he would have to remain on board, watching from afar. The idea of resting while the others risked their lives did not set well with him. He itched the cast, wishing he had something to jam inside. Something to scrap at the hot, sweaty flesh beneath. And now, the fading dose of morphine in his system made using his hand impossible.
"Can you pull up the intel we recovered?" Dahl asked, pounding the cargo ramp button.
"Yes," Moss called back over the comms as the itching intensified with every passing moment. "What am I looking for?"
"A name."
"Anything else?"
"Use the rear sensor array to scan the aft wreckage for non-indigenous life forms."
"Great idea." Moss replied, jamming his finger inside his cast and digging around. "If someone is out there, with a lower body temp, they'll stick out like a sore thumb."
The numbing morphine in his protesting system had begun to wear off, but Moss's arm ached like an abscessed tooth that needed to be pulled. He wanted another dose, but the debilitating meds made him useless. And it was for that reason he refused to take another.
Under normal circumstances, a broken arm in the field is not an issue. But the auto-doc had injected him with a standard set of bone replacement meds. Decades prior, Waylan Yutani created the drug to speed up bone growth during their controversial N6 replicants cloning program. After they ended the program, the pharmaceuticals division repurposed the meds for human usage.
After dosing patients, doctors placed them in a chemical stasis for 72 hours. Accelerated bone stitching procedures could, if left unchecked, lead to cardiac convulsions and death. After 24 hours, the auto-doc revived Moss and prescribed high dose morphine tabs for the next 48 hours.
"If you think breaking your arm hurts," the auto-doc warned. "Wait until you experience bone regrowth." A sudden realization came over Moss. Whoever programmed the auto-doc's bedside manner did a lousy job.
Moss forced his hand to open and close, but the carbon fiber cast protecting his forearm, immobilized his wrist, rendering his hand useless for anything other than pushing buttons.
Later, when he refused to remain on board while his team risked their lives. Lockspur assured him he would indeed remain behind while Dahl took the lead on the upcoming mission. He further assured him they would recon the area and return ASAP. At which time, they could all go the fuck home and forget this shit hole forever. Moss relented, but the idea of them going out alone made him wary.
Sitting in the pilot's seat as they exited the ship gave Moss a better understanding of how Dahl had felt when they forced her to stay on the ship. Even back then, she was ready to go on those missions. And now she was ready to lead this one. But he didn't like it. So he cursed his broken arm and shit luck.
"I should go," Moss said, staring through the windscreen, searching for raptors hiding in the debris field.
"Aye, Amigo. You said it yourself. You'd either get yourself killed or one of us killed. Either way, somebody dies if you go out. Just let yourself heal."
"Besides," Dahl said, gesturing to a monitor that showed a high level of seismic activity beneath the ship. "We shouldn't leave the ship unattended."
"We landed on a plate of steel."
"That doesn't mean they aren't still trying to get in."
"Nice," Moss said, shaking his head. "Leave me here with a horde of angry raptors trying to crawl up my ass."
"That'll never happen. Your head's already up there, amigo."
"Let's just move the ship," Moss said. "That way, you can get there and back quicker."
"It's not that easy," Dahl said. "It'll take hours for the bots to finish clearing out the engines and repair the struts. But even if they could make the repairs faster, without a detailed map of the substrate, we won't know where to touch down again. At least here we have a layer of protection between us and them."
"How long will it take to fix the strut?" Moss asked the AI.
"Estimated time until struts up is 2 hours, 37 minutes."
"That long," Lockspur blurted. "Bow long until we reach orbit?"
"The impact overloaded the capacitors. The energy surge burned out the central electrical bus." Dahl replied. "The FTL drive power runs through that bus. Until the bots replace the bus bar, the ship cannot leave this system."
"Is it me," Moss asked. "Or does it seem like something is trying to keep us here?"
"I don't care what anyone wants," Dahl said. "When we're finished here, we're getting the fuck out."
The eye squinting glare forcing its way through the growing crack above the whining ramp illuminated the inside of the compartment, causing Dahl to don a fresh pair of sunglasses. "See if you can pinpoint a safe path to the tail section," she instructed Moss, gesturing towards the towering spire on the horizon came into view as the ramp lowered.
"Just start walking that way," Moss said. "You can't miss it." He thumbed a gesture over his shoulder. "It's that tall thing sticking up way down there." He grinned at the camera in front of him. Dahl saw him on the comms monitor beside the tailgate.
"One question," Dahl replied.
"Shoot."
"How many fingers are on your hands?"
"Five," Moss answered, looking at his hands.
"Good. Remind me later, I wanted to ask you a question about your trip to paradise."
"Was that it?"
"I expected you to be a little more helpful on my first mission."
"How so?"
"How far is the target? Is there anything out there? What's the easiest route?"
"That's 3 question," Moss said. "But ok, I'l answer in that order. It's 3 clicks away. There may be a shitload of raptors out there. The trench is a wilding gauntlet of twisted metal. And here are a few bonus answers: Being in charge doesn't mean you get what you want. The job isn't easy. Ever. Sometimes it sucks, but you do the best you can with bad intel. And here's one more… amigo. If she gets more than a paper cut out there, I'm going to put my foot up your ass."
"Amigo, calm down," Lockspur said.
"Do you copy?"
"I copy."
"Leave him alone," Dahl snapped, yanking her glasses off. "Thanks for the vote of confidence. This is not how I envisioned starting my first mission. With you questioning my abilities."
"This has nothing to do with your abilities and everything to do with your unwillingness not take me seriously."
"Amigo."
"Don't fucking amigo me. I'm not stupid. I know something is wrong here. And so do you," he added, pointing at Lockspur. "Tell me something isn't going on, compadre? Because shit isn't adding up here. None of this makes sense."
"Let's just get this over," Dahl said, cutting in. Lockspur nodded, but said nothing.
"Just get the aft array online." Dahl said.
"Affirmative," Moss said, grimacing at Lockspur. "Give me a few minutes. I need to pull up the repair schematics." Moss pulled up an operating screen for the rear sensor array. "Someone knocked the short range dish out of alignment."
"Aye, amigo. Blow me," Lockspur called over the comms channel. He held up a middle finger to the loading bay security camera.
Moss flashed a giant grin, revealing two broken teeth. "Amigo, you can't handle any of this action."
Dahl held up the tailgate remote where they could both see it and clicked the button. "If you kids are done measuring dick sizes, we should go," Dahl said, telling herself that no matter how old men were, there would always be a 15-year-old boy inside them.
"Be careful out there," Moss warned, making eye contact with Dahl one last time before she stepped down off the closing ramp. "UV doesn't affect the big ones."
"Sure it does." Dahl replied, looking at Lockspur with a raised brow. "It pisses them off."
Lockspur exhaled a sarcastic laugh. Going out without Moss was crazy. He didn't have a death wish; he had no other options. The team was stronger with a third set of eyes and another weapon. But they had always had each other's backs, and now there was a blind spot behind him. He was glad Dahl was there.
"Moss, I need you to check the cloned files."
"What am I looking for?"
"I saw a name that shouldn't have been there." Dahl explained, following Lockspur over to the edge of the trench as the loud groan of straining hydraulics filled the eerie silence. She peered around, searching for the ears that heard the unfamiliar sound associated with human footsteps. In a world filled with animals evolved with heightened senses, noise had become the betraying enemy. "And Moss, keep the tailgate closed. You don't want any surprises sneaking up from behind you."
"Affirmative. No surprises, mam."
Nothing moved in the near distance, but Dahl realized that didn't mean they were alone. The raptors were out there, hiding in the shadows, and waiting for the chance to strike. She could sense the eyes in the dark watching. There was no telling how far that layer of iron ferrite extended. It could go on for miles or… She looked at the ground beneath her feet and an icy chill ran up her back and jumped on a boulder.
"Who's name did you see?" Moss asked.
"You'll know it when you see it," Dahl answered, hoping she was wrong. "It could have been a trick of the eye. During the chaos of the attack, it was hard to be sure about anything. Let alone a single name buzzing by on a list."
Name or not, she couldn't let herself lose focus. If they were going to get paid and escape this rocky graveyard, the team needed to complete their mission. Dahl stared into the deep trench and imagined a raptor laying in wait behind every pile of debris. "Just let me know what you find." She said, gesturing for Lockspur to head out.
"Copy that, commander." Moss answered, pulling up the cloned files on a nearby display. He prepared to sort through both the passenger and crew manifests. The lists were long, and almost everyone on it had met terrible fates.
Lockspur and Dahl stood in the blistering sunlight surveying the debris field for a straightforward route towards their destination. The trench before them was a gauntlet of jagged debris and neither of them could see an easy way through it. The trip would be a long, winding, and dangerous slog.
A 3 kilometer long mound of loose detritus rose out of a 30 meter deep trench. Even years after the crash, the long swath cut out of rock and hard pack remained intact. Nothing changes on M6-117. There were no winds or precipitation to move things around.
The trench showed no signs the falling craft had been ablaze during its final descent. The arid soil at the bottom of the deep ditch was a sun bleached taupe. No fiery, blackening explosion on, or after, impact. The Hunter Gratzner fell from the sky as if following a predetermined flight path intended to deliver the unlucky survivors straight into the mouths of certain doom.
Dahl stared over the horizon, realizing the answers they came for waited at the impact site. But looking at the rising spar on the horizon, she couldn't help wondering what waited for them?
After an hour of anxiety plagued progress, Dahl felt a raw energy radiating from the nearing horizon. It was unlike anything she felt before. The invisible waves coursed along the trench floor, rose high on the left side, and flipped over on them like waves battering rocky breakers. Dahl's skin turned to gooseflesh; every hair on her body stood on end as a swirling dizziness stole her footing. The rhythmic pulses drew her forward, churning her stomach. Stomach acid rose in her throat and spit filled her mouth. She turned to Lockspur and, from the familiar green expression on his face, she sensed the energy affected him, too.
Lockspur swallowed down his fear, held out a trembling hand and touched the non-existent forces. He stared at the horizon, thinking, keep going no matter what. "Can you feel that?" he asked.
"Is it coming from the drive core?" Dahl asked, holding up her hand in a mimicking pose. She wanted to go back to the ship and fly away, but couldn't abandon her first mission.
"No." Lockspur replied, shaking the disorienting sensation away. "You can't feel a radiation leak. At least, not until body parts bloat and bits and pieces fall off." He looked to the sky and thought of Sol Lucia and the night he met Lilith. This was not the first time he felt something like this. "Something is coming."
"How do you know?"
Lockspur stared motionless, as if watching a memory play out in the sky. "It's in the air." He paused, remembering what Lilith told him: no matter what you encounter, you must reach the aft section. Everything hinges on you getting there. He saw the fear in her eyes, and it terrified him. He never imagined Lilith could feel fear.
"Carlos." Dahl said, snapping him out of his own head. "Do you know what this energy is?"
"I have," he admitted, turning back to the trench, half expecting to see Lilith standing on the horizon. No one was there. But Lockspur was certain there would be soon. His hour of reckoning would soon be at hand.
"I thought they were stories."
"You were supposed to."
"Is Moss right. Is Lilith out there?"
"Would it surprise you if she was?" he asked, turning to Dahl. She did not answer. "I don't know what's out there. But I know what isn't." He held up a scanner, adjusted the screen, and Dahl saw his eyebrow go up. He grimaced and said, "No radiation."
Dahl's stomach flip-flopped. The horizon tilted, and she almost fell over. "I feel twisted and bent up inside." She lifted her rifle, peering through her scope. "What's happening?"
He shook his head and gestured toward the horizon. "Your call. Forward; or back?"
"No choice," she replied, walking off towards the horizon. "We've come too far to turn back."
Part of him wished she had said back. The other part said, "Glad to hear that."
"That makes one of us," she said as he followed her towards the trench. The tiny hairs on the tops of her arms bristled, as if an army of wriggling ants scurried up her arms. It was an unpleasant feeling, and she itched her forearms until they were red and raw. She wanted to go back. The building sensation was maddening. Even worse than the chaffing sand and sweat was that every cell in her body felt as though it were being turned inside out.
Lockspur dug at the underside of his forearm. Blood dripped onto the pale, dusty sand. He saw Dahl's discomfort and met her eyes. "Don't worry. The sensation passes. At least it did when I felt it."
Dahl noticed the blaring red boil still on the underside of Lockspur's forearm. "You didn't have the auto-doc check that, did you?"
"It's nothing," he replied, covering the sore.
"Is everything I know about Lilith a lie?"
"It's not that simple. The problem isn't the things you know about Lilith, it's the things you don't know. She enigmatic. A force of nature."
Lady Hemmingford was the last member of house Benoit. She was as much a bygone vestige of old as was the Hunter Gratznre. A forgotten royal born into a penniless family bereft of power and sway. But Lilith had fought her way to the top, seizing power where she could, stealing power where she couldn't and amassing an unequalled fortune. Lilith Hemmingford was an unstoppable force who popped up anywhere, and at any time. And no one knew how she did it. But Lilith had always treated Dahl with respect. Johns had told her, if you ever need help, go to her. But Dahl had seen her pathological need for vengeance, and that often unbridled side of Lilith Hemmingford scared her.
"There's something off about Lilith."
"It's safe to say. There's a lot more Lady Hemmingford than many would believe."
"Could this energy field be a magnetic field coming from the planets?"
"You mean, did the planets align? Doubtful. That kind of energy would be deadly. This feels more like space/time folding in on itself."
"Christ," Dahl said, shaking her head at the absurdity. "That nuts."
Dahl held her rifle at the ready. Her heart beat faster as the waves came in undulating pulses, filling her chest with an uneasy fear. She stopped every so often, scanning from object to object, dirt mound to dirt mound, ensuring no toothy surprises would jump out to attack them. She'd had quite enough excitement at the first site, and would bear the scars of her last encounter for the rest of her days. Her injuries were deep and ugly, and were not the type of wounds that said, you're a badass. No, her injuries screamed, you're damn lucky to be alive! And she was lucky. They were lucky to be alive.
A line of swirling dust devils meandered across the horizon and Dahl couldn't help thinking, whatever is out there, it knows we're coming. Every time an energy wave passed through a dust devil, the swirling column distorted and then returned to its original shape before continuing on.
Lockspur stopped at the lower edge of the trench, studying the debris patterns. The rubble revealed the truth. Finding out what had happened was the cover story that brought them there. He was interested in what had dragged the giant ship down. He was going through the motions. A great pretender, perpetrating a flimsy ruse that could get his teammates killed.
"What are you thinking?" Dahl asked.
And there it was. The one question revealing Dahl knew something was off. Not just with the mission, but with him and his part in it. She knew he was hiding something.
The orange sky drew the moisture from his parched mouth like a nun drew guilt from a choir boy caught with a porn mag. He wanted an end to this mission. He wanted to go home and forget this place, but he feared the thing waiting for him on the horizon may lead to their doom. And that Dahl had seen through his excuses. She was smart. Too smart.
Lockspur took the canteen from his belt, took a long, cooling swig, and tossed it to Dahl. She took a drink and fastened the canteen to her belt. "Any ideas?"
"Too many," he answered, surveying the area through a set of binoculars. "From here, it looks like the 3 aft sections disconnected when the ship struck the surface. If I had to guess what happened next. They flipped in the air and arrowed in." The roughness of his deep voice roused Dahl from her drifting thoughts. "See here," he added, moving the end of his rifle barrel in a large arc to depict the swirling direction of the deep trench. "After that, the mid sections anchored in, raising the command deck several inches above the ground, allowing it to slide down range another 3 kilometers. It's a miracle the forward sections didn't tear themselves to pieces."
"Do you think we're safe out here?" Dahl asked, staring at the gigantic wreckage looming on the nearing horizon. They were close now.
"That depends on your definition of safe." Lockspur answered, head teetering on his shoulders. He had a wild theory about how the ship reached the surface. And if he was right, it explained a lot about what had been happening. "There are forces at play here we don't understand," he added, more speaking to himself than Dahl.
"Did a meteor strike cause the accident?"
"I'd say less than zero percent," Lockspur said, kneeling down to scoop up a handful of parched soil from the trench floor. As he let the grains fall, he pointed his handheld scanner at the dust. "There's no fallout. Nada. If I weren't looking at the wreckage, I'd say this crash was impossible."
"Possible or not. There it is." Dahl said, rubbing her arm.
He shrugged. "And that's what scares the shit out of me." He gestured at the wreckage. "There it is."
"Lets move out," Dahl said in a foreboding tone. Even though the energy waves were subsiding, she hesitated to move closer. "You said the last time you experienced something like this, it only lasted a short time."
"I did," he admitted, looking from the looming horizon back to the tiny ship in the growing distance. Lilith was very clear in her instructions. Get there, someone will contact you. Deliver the package and come home. Tell no one. He had to keep going. He held out his hand, testing the air for unseen dangers. "Whatever is causing this is fading. By the time we reach the aft compartments, it should have dissipated."
"No answers; no pay," Dahl said, turning to Lockspur. He looked pale in the endless sun. Too pale. "Are you all right?"
"I'll get by," he replied, offering g a weak smile. What was he doing? He knew going out there was a terrible idea. They were walking straight into danger. A deal made with the devil, and more than a pound of flesh lost if he failed to uphold his end of the bargain. He shook his head and frowned. "There's no shame in turning back. You can return and I'll come back after I check it out. We don't both have to be out here."
Dahl's mouth dropped, her face reddened, and the ghost of an expletive crossed her face. He hadn't meant to imply anything, but his words struck her in the face with the same force as if he'd called her a coward.
"What's going on, Carlos?"
"Just trust me," he said, not wanting to make eye contact. "I need you to go back to the ship."
Dahl croaked out a sarcastic laugh. "And have Moss hold that over my head for the next 30 years. I don't fucking think so. And what happens if you get killed out there? I get to live with that guilt for the rest of my days. No, thank you. Either forward or backwards, we stay together."
"You know. Some days I love you, and some days I want to ring your neck."
"And some days you want to do both," she replied with the slightest smirk. "Why don't you save us both a lot of talking and tell me what's going on?"
"There are a lot of unknowns out there," he admitted, gesturing over her shoulder with a grim expression. "And the closer we get to the wreckage, the more it becomes clear something unnatural brought the ship down."
"That's not an answer."
"No. It's not. But it is the only one I have right now."
She sighed, knowing he was hiding something important, maybe dangerous. But pressing him for answers right now would only push them further from the truth.
She understood the crash defied the laws of physics. How could a nuclear-powered vessel 10 times larger than the Chrysler building fall out of the sky at 25,000 MPH, and not explode or, at the very least, burn up in the atmosphere?
"Any idea where that pulse came from?" Dahl asked, holding out a hand as if trying to get a bearing on the power ebbing from the horizon. She watched Lockspur scanning the wreckage. Lockspur said nothing; his expression was unreadable. Dahl suspected he had a crazy idea. "Why isn't there any radiation?" she asked, kneeling down to inspect the soil for herself. "There should be trace amounts of radiation coming off the aft compartment. We're close enough to pick it up."
"We are," he agreed, walking to the top side of the trench. He pointed Moss' favorite handheld scanner towards the compartment, increased its gain, and took several lengthy readings. At which point, his mood worsened. "Zero rads," he said, wishing he hadn't checked again. No radiation meant, no drive cores, no cooling system and no containment storage units entered the atmosphere. He said nothing of the missing drive units. "Whatever happened to that ship had nothing to do with a hull breech. Whatever took it out of the sky is more powerful than pirates or anything mother nature could throw at it."
"It's not working?" she asked, holding out a hand to take the scanner.
Lockspur lobed the scanner. "Here. Look for yourself. It's a cheap piece of shit, but it's good enough for a simple rad scan." Lockspur glimpsed the ominous expression Dahl tried to hide as she studied the readout.
She tossed the scanner back, and he snatched it out of the air. "She lied," Dahl said, remembering the quick glimpse of the freighter's manifest. "We're not here for Will."
"She doesn't lie. It's more like she twists the facts. But why the change of heart?"
Dahl gestured to the looming wreckage. "It's pretty hard to deny that something is wrong here. And it scares me that Lilith knows what happened here long before sending us. She scares me."
"She scares everyone. Even me," he admitted, words escaping his lips before he realized he uttered them into existence. He laughed. "It's sort of her super power. She exudes a don't fuck with me pheromone. And that other one we won't talk about."
Dahl watched him spin in a circle, staring through his scope as if searching for a creature more elusive than bio-raptors. "What are you looking for?" she asked, realizing it wasn't raptors. "There isn't another human within a billion miles."
"There is," he said in an apologetic tone that made her think he was hiding something. A small voice whispered in his ear. Lilith told you to say nothing.
"That's not what you said earlier."
"I said a lot of things earlier, didn't I?"
"You did."
"Dahl," he began, riveting her on the spot with a foreboding stare. "I need you to go back to the ship before it's too late. You're not safe out here."
"No one is."
"Go."
"Moss was right, you up to something."
"I do."
"We're half a click from our target. Let's just get it done and go back. I want off this rock. Like yesterday."
Lockspur held her in his gaze. He did not want to continue on if she accompanied him. But her expression screamed, I'm not going back. "Fine, But I'm taking the lead," Lockspur said, raising his weapon. An awful thought occurred to him. He had a delivery to make, but did he have to be alive to make the transfer?
When they were 300 meters away from the aft compartment, Lockspur saw hundreds of tiny holes. "It looks like it's been through a meat grinder," he said, pointing at the gigantic tower in the nearing distance. "The report may have been right. Looks like a meteor strike from here."
"Dahl," Moss called over the comms. "I have the data you requested and you won't believe what I found."
"Shit," Lockspur whispered to himself. "What now?" He turned back to the ship, lifted his binoculars and saw Moss standing behind the windscreen staring back through his own binoculars. Lockspur offered Moss a friendly middle finger. Moss returned the gesture with a grin.
"Fucking men," Dahl said.
"Sorry, mam," Moss said. "Just a warrior bonding ritual."
"How's the arm?" Dahl asked.
"No complaints, mam."
"Stop calling me, mam."
"Yes, mam." Lockspur said.
"Sorry, mam." Moss added.
"Dicks."
"He's lying," Lockspur said, handing Dahl the binoculars. "See for yourself. He looks like the ass end of a-"
"I got it," Dahl snapped, cutting him off as she peered through the binoculars. "How can you tell he's not better?"
"Because the last mission I did without him, he mooned me. This time he gave me the finger. Seems a little tame, doesn't it?"
"Did you stop aging at 15?"
Lockspur laughed. "12."
"Go ahead, Moss." Dahl clicked her fingers at Lockspur, who had walked off. When he turned around, she signaled him to hold up and tapped a finger on her headset. She watched him hop onto a sizable chunk of debris and scan several nearby piles of debris through his scope. "What are you looking for?" she asked, covering her microphone.
"Riddick." Moss said, at such a low volume, it was almost as if he didn't want to speak the name aloud. "Will was transporting Riddick."
Lockspur turned to Moss, standing in the distant vessel. "Amigo, did you say Riddick?"
"I did. Will was transporting Riddick to the Vega colony. A triple Max." Moss said, stressing the name as he transmitted the information to the data pads on their wrists. "It was a last-minute booking. He paid a shitload of credits to secure safe passage through the ghost lanes. More than he would have cleared on the bounty."
"You call this safe passage?" Dahl asked, gesturing at the scattered rubble. "I call it having no other choice."
Moss ignored her. "That's not the only name I found."
"I heard Will wouldn't leave him alone." Lockspur cut in, turning to Dahl with a foreboding squint. "Stupid fucker hounded Riddick from one end of the galaxy to the other. It was like he was trying to prove he was better than his father."
"He had a fucking death wish." Moss snapped. "Poke a wounded animal long enough, and it will fight back."
"You wanted to know what happened to Will," Lockspur said.
"It's obvious," Moss said. "Riddick happened."
"Amigo, you don't think..." Lockspur stopped mid sentence, not wanting to say anything that may upset Dahl.
"Poke a bear." Moss said.
"Don't assume shit. We don't know anything," Dahl snapped, not liking the sudden sidebar conversation going on without her. "We could still find intel."
"Unlikely." Moss said, remembering the time Lilith told them to stay away from Riddick. "Lilith warned us off Riddick. Shit, if she won't go after him, no one should." He had told no one he thought Lilith was the Dark Athena, but he was certain she knew he did, and she liked that he did.
"And the other name?" Dahl asked.
"The one we have been looking for," Moss said. "And there's visual confirmation, as well. The ship's emergency surveillance cameras caught a few images of a boy."
"A boy," Dahl repeated, uncertainty in her voice making her tone go up.
"If I hadn't known her before, I wouldn't have looked twice. She was almost unrecognizable."
Lockspur turned to Dahl wearing such an ominous expression it froze her in her tracks. He knew something, and it wasn't a good thing. "Who are we talking about?" he demanded, voice so low and gravelly it frightened her.
"Kyra." Moss answered. "She was here."
"That's not possible," Lockspur blurted.
"Seems like there is a lot of not possible going on around here," Moss said.
"Was she okay?" Dahl asked again, still frozen in Lockspur's gaze as his toasted almond complexion went a holy fuck shade of he's gonna explode crimson.
A momentary silence filled the comms and then Moss said, "She had a shaved head and welding goggles. If it was a disguise, it was a damn good one. I looked at her image three times before I knew who it was."
"Welding goggles?" Dahl said, thinking she had misunderstood.
"Regardless of her questionable wardrobe choices," he continued. "It's pretty clear, the boy in the footage is Kyra." Moss continued, forwarding the vid to their handsets. They stood in the glare of the blistering suns, watching their video feeds with a mixture of amazement and disbelief.
"It is her," Lockspur said, exhaling. "This is bad."
"Are you insane? This is great." Dahl blurted, turning to him in wide-eyed disbelief. "We found her, and you think it's bad? We've been searching the Galaxy non-stop, for how long?" Dahl turned back toward Moss and asked, "What was the name she used to book passage?"
"She booked passage under the name Jacks." Moss sai
"She took his name." Dahl thought out loud, staring down at the face of a shaved head 12-year-old girl wearing welding goggles. "It's quite the getup."
"You think this is great?" Lockspur blared. "It's him." Lockspur answered, a grimace contorting into a look of shock. "She's emulating him." He squinted at the image on his wrist, wishing he hadn't come. What the fuck have I gotten myself into this time? he thought. First the secret mission and now this. What the fuck is next?
"Him, who?" Dahl asked, as if the concept of emulating a man was offensive to her. The idea made her wonder what ugly family secret had they hidden from her. And from the look on Lockspur's face, did she really want to know what that secret was? She hoped her family was not a white washed illusion seen through a haze of half truths and careful omission.
"This mission has nothing to do with finding Will. This is about finding them." Lockspur said, looking at Dahl as if she understood what he was referring to.
"Are you getting too much sun? Do we need to go sit down?"
How could Dahl have lived in their house as part of their family and not known who Kyra was? Not know the lies and secrets. And for the first time Dahl saw, Lockspur was mad that Johns. kept those secrets. "This total fiasco, all the deaths, all the suffering, it's about bringing them together." Lockspur said, in a voice below a controlled freak out.
"Them who?" Dahl demanded, the surprised tone in her wavering voice causing Lockspur to go slack jawed.
"She doesn't know," he said, dumbfounded by her sheer ignorance. "How can you not know?"
"Will you tell me what he's babbling about?" Dahl asked, gesturing at Lockspur as if he were losing his mind.
"No idea."
Lockspur ignored them and continued, "Kyra runs away and just ends up on the one ship in the Galaxy transporting the one guy she's never supposed to meet. And then... she shaves her head, throws on a pair of goggles and runs around pretending to be what? His little sidekick. His little protégé. They don't even know each other, but here she is, daddy's little girl."
"What are you talking about?"
"Kyra was here." Lockspur replied, pointing at the ground. "Riddick was here," he added, still pointing at the ground as if that should mean something. "Same time; same place; same transport. The odds of that happening are 1 in not a goddamn chance. But here they are, hanging out together at the ass end of fucking nowhere. Best buds on a sun bleached holiday hellhole."
"Amigo, calm down."
He reeled around, facing Moss in the ship, and said, "I overheard Lilith telling John they could never meet." He pointed up at the sky as if pinpointing Lilith on the other side of the Galaxy and added, "She said if they did, nasty shit would happen. Like apocalyptic shit."
"What the fuck are you blathering about?" Dahl demanded.
"Crap," Moss said, talking over her. "Lilith knew we'd pick up their trail."
"Seriously." Lockspur replied, as if Moss were being obtuse. "What is it with you two? It was her plan from the beginning."
John's step daughter. Kyra ran away from home weeks prior to Will's disappearance. And the only reason Johns had gone back to being a mercenary, a profession his new wife despised, was to get Lilith's help to find Kyra and bring her home. But her aid came with a single stipulation: If I help you bring Kyra home, you come back to the business for good. He agreed without hesitation. Such is the love of a father. Even a stepfather.
"Who is Riddick to Kyra?" Dahl asked, face flashing red.
"It was Lilith. She told us to stay away from him. And all the while, she had Will on Riddick's ass. She used Will to get Riddick into position. She sent everyone out on missions the day Kyra ran away, and then aborted most of the contract, the day after she ran off without a trace."
"What are you saying?" Moss asked.
"She set this meeting up; She sent us her to find them."
"That's a neat superpower?" Dahl replied, shaking her head. "She can see the future? Next, you'll say she caused the meteor shower that downed this ship."
"No meteor shower downed the Hunter Gratzner." Lockspur blared, as if Dahl were being ridiculous. "And the Goddamn proof is out there," he added, gesturing down the trench.
"So, according to you, Lilith set all this up prior to Will and Riddick booking passage."
"So, you think this is a coincidence?" Lockspur asked, rolling his eyes and risking Dahl's don't patronize me wrath. "Riddick and Kyra popping up in the middle of the ghost lanes."
"What's the big deal?" Dahl asked, not seeing a problem.
"Isn't it obvious?" he replied.
"Isn't what obvious?" Dahl snapped back, as if Lockspur was being obtuse.
"That every step daughter has an actual father, too." Lockspur replied, shaking his head at Dahl.
"Are you saying?"
"There's darkness in Lilith." Lockspur said, cutting her off, as a look of realization crossed Dahl's face. "There's no mistaking that. But this would take some kind of next level intel to pull this shit off."
"Why send us out here if she set it up to begin with?" Moss asked.
"Something went wrong." Lockspur said to himself. "The crash wasn't part of the plan or..." He paused, staring out at the horizon and thinking about their true purpose for coming. The meeting and the thing on his arm. "Something else is going to happen."
"Compadre," Moss said. "There's nothing going on here. No one could survive in this place. We're just here to pick up their trail. Will's dead, and now Lilith needs new bloodhounds to take up the chase."
"Wrong." Lockspur said, mind connecting a line of dots only he could see. "You said it yourself, amigo. You heard a woman's voice behind that hatch. She's here."
"Lilith," Moss blurted, "No way." The comms channel went quiet, then he said, "At least, we know why Johns dumped 250,000 credits to get us all the way out here."
"Johns didn't dump shit into this mission." Lockspur replied. "This is all Lilith. Johns doesn't have the capital to fund a mission like this."
"Do we know if any of them survived?" Dahl asked, staring up at Lockspur as if not wanting to hear any more ludicrous hypotheses about Lilith. God, if she had to hear anymore about the Lady in black or the Dark Athena, she was going to scream.
"Dahl." Moss said, pulling her back to their conversation. "There's a list of impact survivors entered by acting captain, Carolyn Fry."
"Did William make it out alive?"
"He's on the list of passengers who survived the initial crash. But there's no list of who made it off-world."
Lockspur stood on the debris, peering at the aft compartment. He turned to Dahl. "Johns said the company report contained a 2nd report from a Colonial Marines battle cruiser that found a derelict ship drifting 2.3 light years from here. 6 days after the Hunter Gratzner crash, a company rangers unit found the Kublai Khan drifting with a single mercenary identified as Alexander Toombs. Everyone else aboard was dead."
"Toombs," Moss said. "He was a ranger misfit."
"Right." Lockspur said. "Toombs reported an unknown man, a cleric named Imam, and a young boy named Jacks murdered his boss and escaped in a shuttle registered to a defunked mining company on M6-117."
"The un-named man, described as a large Caucasian, late 20s, muscular build with silver eyes that reflected light, led the shuttle crew," Moss said.
"I'm sorry, Dahl. Three people made it out, and Will wasn't one of them."
"If that's so, why would Riddick take two witnesses who can report he's still alive?" Dahl asked.
"No idea. Maybe he's not a bad guy," Moss said, and a shallow laugh escaped his lips.
"Listen," Lockspur replied, holding up three fingers. "There are three constants in this galaxy."
"Oh, shit… here we go." Dahl said, with a snarky smirk. "He's invoking the 3 constants."
"Stay away from the Necros, don't cross the Lady in Black, and never… ever... fuck with Riddick."
"And not in that order." Moss added.
"Sounds like the 3 rules of paranoia, superstition, and bullshit." Dahl replied, gesturing for Lockspur to get down. "And just to clarify, why do the 3 constants keep changing? Aren't they constants? Because we have to be upwards of 300 constants by now."
Moss snickered and said, "He likes to think of them as common sense guidelines to help us reach a healthy and happy tomorrow."
"Sure, Carlos." Dahl replied, rolling her eyes. "Any other words of wisdom?"
"As a matter of fact," Lockspur replied, jumping down from his pulpit. "Never ignore the three constants." He walked off towards the large mound of dirt on the horizon, readying his rifle for anything that may jump from behind the minefield of debris littering their path. "I didn't see any movement between here and there. I'm taking that as a positive sign."
"Is that a constant?" Dahl asked, catching up to him. He said nothing. "Fine. I'm keeping my finger on the trigger."
"Good idea," he said, gesturing for her to come up beside him. "Just don't stand behind me when you do."
Over the next 25 minutes, the two of them negotiated the debris field without incident. The further they went, the more Lockspur slowed down. By the time they reached the engine compartment, he had developed a limp and gripping his side. When they stopped, he took a blue pill out of his left breast pocket, put it in his mouth and washed it down with a mouthful of piss warm water.
The compartment had torpedoed into a massive crater 20 feet deeper than the lowest part of the trench. Dahl peered over the edge, scanning the area for a way to make certain they could get out if they jumped inside. There was no simple way down or out of the trench, and once inside, they would have to make their way back to the ship in a dugout left in the forward compartment's wake.
Lockspur pointed at an open cargo hatch on the top, port-side rear corner and said, "If we want to get in, we need to figure a way to get up there." The open hatch revealed a patch of darkness inside. It mocked them from 200 feet above the surface. The hanging hatch appeared damaged; it was more burst out than swung open. But with a lot of effort, they could reach the opening.
"Can you take readings from here?" Dahl asked, not wanting to take anymore unnecessary chances.
"Sure." Lockspur said, grinning at Dahl. "But we won't know for sure if we don't go inside."
She shook her head weakly and said, "I don't want to go in there. I've had enough excitement for one trip." She peered up the twisted siding and realized the climb would be dangerous and impossible. Maybe not for her, but for Lockspur. "Besides. It can't be safe in there."
"Definitely." Lockspur replied, removing the scanner from a pouch on his side. "The ship is theirs by now." He held out the scanner as if pointing a sidearm and studied it with growing concern. "Can't get an accurate internal reading. Too much structural interference," he said, "I can't tell you how many raptors are in there. But I can tell you what isn't in there." He showed Dahl the readout on his scanner and said, "Not a trace of radiation. Zero."
"That's good."
"That's not good; it's impossible," Lockspur said, touching her arm before she vaulted over the edge of the trench. "Wait. Look at the aft hull plating. This wasn't a meteor strike; it's weapons fire. And that's not the worst thing."
"There's more?"
He nodded. "No radiation; means no engines, no fuel rods, no cooling system. The entire propulsion system is missing. Vanished without a trace. "
"Gone. How's that possible?" Dahl asked, staring up at the swiss cheese remains of the enormous aft compartment. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny uniform holes letting in laser thin beams of light. The blast, whatever it was, left everything inside the compartment riddled with holes. She turned to Lockspur with a look of shock. "It would take round-the-clock maintenance crews 6 months in dry dock to remove that propulsion system."
"More like 3 months." Lockspur stressed, removing the tip of his fingers from her arm. "The company discontinued production of the old series 1s, after retrofit crews refused to strip their radioactive cores."
"Are you sure the propulsion system is missing?"
Lockspur gestured at the scanner and said, "I'm not saying anything. The scanner is. See. No radiation. The propulsion systems in these old clunkers are volatile. Not being in there is the only reason this is in one piece is because the propulsion system didn't go into a critical meltdown."
Dahl gestured around at the extensive damage. "You call this one piece?"
"I call this impossible. When the old series-ones detonated, they went up with a blast equivalent to that of a Hiroshima bomb; the remaining fragments burned up in the upper atmosphere. Not a lot of ground damage. Great light show. But the blast covers the planet in EMP and vast clouds of radiation."
"Then how did it get here?" Dahl asked, mesmerized by the sheer size of the aft compartment. It towered above the deep trench.
"That's my point." Lockspur replied, looking around as if something was watching them. "It can't be here. Whoever or whatever had the power to remove those engines in mid-flight is not natural."
"Horse shit." Dahl replied, searching her thoughts for the explanation that would never come.
"Fine. You're clever, chica. Explain it."
After conceding the implausible answer, she pointed at the holes and asked, "That's what downed the ship?"
"It started the alarms," he said, pointing to the back of the compartment. "Those holes would have led to a catastrophic decompression, triggering a ship's wide alert and waking key personnel."
"Why didn't the crew react when the alarms sounded?"
"They were in stasis." Lockspur replied. "The ship's computer would have awoken them. Hell, you just came out of stasis withdrawal. Could we have saved our ship during a meteor strike?"
"No."
"By the time they were on their feet and figured out what was happening, it was already too late. Most of them were already dead; they just didn't know it yet. And if I'm right and there are no engines in there. They were operating on battery backups alone. This thing came down dead stick and even under those circumstances, the ship would burn up on re-entry. This ship entered the moon's atmosphere at a quarter speed of light."
"What's going on here?" Moss asked himself, watching them through the long-range camera array, as they made their way towards the horizon. Outside, he caught an occasional glimpse of the maintenance bots still cleaning out the intakes. "Dahl," he called out and waited for a response. No answer. "Compadre, can you hear me?" No answer. Even though he could see them, he couldn't hear them and they couldn't hear him. He became worried. Something was preventing them from communicating.
"There is some dark shit at play here." Lockspur said, jumping over the edge of the trench and sliding to a stop at the bottom of the trench. They were in deep now. 150 feet beneath the surface.
Dahl slid to a stop at Lockspur's side and said, "Your superstitious nature is getting the better of you again."
"Is it?" he replied, holding out his scanner and gesturing for her to come look. As they approached the ship, he gestured towards the myriad of holes. "This damage isn't consistent with what you'd find after a meteor strike. The company would have seen this and known that. The report is false. This was an obvious attack. And anyone who saw the report would not have known that." He looked at Dahl and added, "So... why spend all the coin getting us way out here? Seems fishy. Unless Lilith knows more than she letting on?"
"I hope you're wrong." Dahl replied.
"I'm not," he said, walking closer to get a better look. "See here. While these strikes are consistent with a meteor shower pattern, the impacts are too uniform. Anyone who has been in a battle would recognize this kind of damage. Meteorites are anything but uniform; they are random." He pointed the scanner at the entry holes and added, "And look at this," he continued, jamming the scanner into her hands. "See for yourself. The residue around the penetrations is manmade, not a occurring mineral."
"What's that prove?" Dahl asked.
"Necromongers are the only military that uses this type of long range projectile." He answered.
"Those weird religious fanatics from Asylum shot the Hunter Gratzner down."
"That's my guess." Lockspur answered, gesturing for Dahl to follow him back towards the shit.
"This area is teaming with pirates. They attack ships all the time. Maybe they made it look like a Necro attack?" Dahl asked.
"Possible. But why? There's no reason for pirates to bother with faking a meteor strike," he answered, thinking hard. "whoever did this weren't pirates or Necros." Lockspur replied, waving away her oncoming attempt to argue. "While both could have attacked this ship; neither could remove the engines in the time between the hull breach and impact. That's a technology neither group possesses. No one possesses that level of technology. It doesn't exist."
"So," Dahl said, "if we find the missing engines, we find the individuals responsible for the crash?"
Lockspur shook his head in doubt. "No one will ever find those engines. They're gone."
"Why go to all the trouble to make this look like an accident?" Dahl asked. "What were they after?"
"Those answers are in there," he said, gesturing to the wreckage.