Unsung Heroes

Tola watched quietly as the Varrcaran soldiers dragged a motionless figure into the cell across the hall. The lighting was dim, but he still recognized the armor; it belonged to the bounty hunter he had seen battling in town. The soldiers stripped the unconscious human of his armor and weapons, then sealed the bars behind them.

Things were looking grim, but Tola hadn’t lost hope yet. Computer files aboard this dreadnought might just have the factory coordinates he was searching for. A simple message to the Earth Alliance could get a fleet here within hours. The facility would still be destroyed, and his mission a success.

Of course, he had to get free first.

Tola knew that capture was always a possibility on these missions, and he’d prepared a number of contingency plans for such an occasion. The fact that the Regime had confiscated his belongings could work in his favor, but it would take time for his plans to come through. The problem was Tola couldn’t do this alone; he would need an ally strong enough to handle the Varrcaran soldiers. The bounty hunter fit the bill, and more importantly, Tola knew where he was being kept.

Two hours later, troopers came to his cell.

“The commander wants a word with you,” one of the guards said.

Tola raised an eyebrow. “Which word?”

“Knock it off, Alliance scum!” he snapped, as the other guard placed a pair of handcuffs across Tola’s wrists.

Before the mission, Tola had planted false data into his smartphone of a massive strike force gathering near a major Varrcaran base. However, the star system and name of the base were purposefully left out to raise questions. It seemed the commander had taken the bait.

The guards prodded him out of his cell, and as he passed by, Tola gave the bounty hunter a slight nod, hoping he understood the message.

The entire plan hinged on the soldiers marching him to the bridge. Not because of the destination itself, but because of the route they would take. If this was anything like the last dreadnought Tola was on, they would pass right by the room he needed.

Tola’s heart skipped a beat when he saw the familiar path he had mapped in his head. A bead of sweat ran down his brow and adrenaline coursed through his veins. Carefully watching the two soldiers, Tola waited for his chance.

It came as soon as the soldier on his right asked his companion a question. Once the first word came out, Tola made his move. He swung his cuffed hands, clubbing the nearest trooper, and knocking him to the ground. Before the other soldier could react, Tola ducked into the room to his left. He punched the panel on the wall, slamming and locking the door behind him with a metallic hiss.

“Do you think that’s going to save you?” one of the soldiers shouted, pounding on the door. “It’s only a matter of time before we pry you out of there. Then I’ll shoot you myself!”

Ignoring the man’s ravings, Tola smiled and rubbed his hands together.

The cell block control room. Perfect. . . .

Tola rushed to the terminal and pulled up surveillance. Just outside the room both soldiers were already tinkering with the door. Tola’s bound hands flew over the keyboard as fast as they could, pulling up the self-defense system in the hall. Mounted security weapons fired nonlethal rounds at the two guards, taking them both down in a flash.

Tola breathed a sigh of relief. Time for phase two.

Hacking into the camera feed, he saw the bounty hunter kneeling beside his cell door.

Looks like he got the message.

Tola cycled through the feeds until he found something else—something he hadn’t counted on. A lone cell block centered in the middle of a white room. Inside was the huge Latoroth he had seen in town.

Stretching his hands as far apart as the handcuffs would allow, Tola entered commands via the keyboard. The entire cell block went black, save for his terminal screen and the surveillance cameras, which he switched over to infrared. With a few more strokes of the keyboard, he overrode the locks on both the alien’s and the bounty hunter’s cells. Then Tola manually powered up the lights he wanted, creating a beacon for them to follow.

Sometimes the answer to a desperate situation was simply to create chaos. A satisfied smile curled at the edges of his mouth.

I’ve unleashed the beasts. Now to find that construction facility.

Terrik was ready the moment his door slid open. Several quick strides took him out of the cell and into the adjacent hallway. The corridor was well-lit, its metallic gray walls gleaming beneath the series of running lights overhead. Written in large bold letters were the words: BLACK SCOURGE.

Must be the name of the ship.

Unfortunately, Terrik didn’t know the layout of Varrcaran vessels at all, but his first objective was to retrieve his armor. To him it was more than just protective gear; it was a part of who he was and the warrior culture he hailed from.

Suddenly klaxons began to blare, warning the rest of the vessel that hostiles were loose. Terrik clenched his teeth together, wishing desperately that he had a weapon. Moments later he heard the heavy tread of footsteps approaching. Glancing to either side, he searched for a chamber to duck into, but the corridor was long and bare.

There was nowhere for him to go.

At least I’ll go down fighting, he thought grimly.

Just as the security guards rounded the corner, the lights winked and flickered out, most likely the result of the hooded figure’s tampering. Surprised murmurs emanated from the troopers, and Terrik fell upon them like a cornered animal.

Unlike most soldiers, Terrik was used to fighting in the dark. In one clean motion he broke the closest guard’s neck, took the assault rifle from her lifeless hands, and gunned down the other three troopers.

The entire encounter took fewer than four seconds. Looking over his fallen enemies, he found the one closest to his size and donned the man’s light gray battle armor. The armor wasn’t nearly as advanced as his own design, but it might let him pass through checkpoints unhindered. The Regime was led by the alien Varrcarans, but they enlisted other species into their ranks—even humans. Terrik just had to hope no one recognized his face behind the visor.

The lights powered back on, and Terrik nodded to the security camera in the upper corner of the room. A second later the door in front of him unlocked, allowing him clear passage to move about the vessel.

It had been some time since he’d been aboard a battle cruiser—he’d forgotten just how massive they really were. Most chambers rose upwards of twenty meters, and extended from end to end by thirty or forty. It was like being in a small utilitarian city.

Terrik shook his head. This was no time to gawk. Even if he reclaimed his armor and weapons, he still had to find a way off the Scourge, and that wouldn’t be easy, especially with the alarms ringing. Though he hated to admit it, he would probably need the computer hacker’s help—if he could find him.

The subsequent door slid open, revealing an empty mess hall, and Terrik suddenly realized it could take hours, possibly even days to search every chamber within the dreadnought. But no matter how long it took, he was going to get his armor back.

Even if he had to tear the entire ship apart to do it.

Imprisoned again. Dex couldn’t believe his luck. After all the torture and empty promises from the Coalition, now, apparently, it was the Regime’s turn.

Dex’s hand clenched into a fist, but while he was contained within an Inhibitor Field, he couldn’t draw upon his powers to free himself. There was nothing he could do.

And then, almost as if he had wished it into reality, the Inhibitor Field flickered twice, then deactivated. His cell door’s light turned green, indicating it was unlocked. Dex could hardly believe his eyes. For a second he simply sat there, stunned. Then a grim smile played on his lips and he rose to his full two-hundred-and-twenty centimeter height.

His electrical whip was gone but he didn’t need that to survive. Fate had given him a second chance at vengeance, and he was going to make sure that all of Varrcara knew it. Walking out of his cell, he scraped his red-skinned hand across the wall below the words: BLACK SCOURGE.

Dex gathered the power at his command, felt it surge inside him, begging to be unleashed. Alarms bellowed through the ship, but Dex welcomed the sound; it would only draw his enemies toward him.

The door to his right slid open of its own volition—no one was waiting on the other side. Dex peered up at the security camera in the corner of the room and realized what was happening: someone was trying to guide his path.

Dex snorted. How stupid did they think he was? Turning the opposite way, the Latoroth marched up to the door on the other side of the hall and placed his palm against the center of the frame. Pouring out his energy, he agitated the molecules of the metal to the point of combustion. The door blew off its hinges and sailed outward from Dex’s hand until it struck the far wall, detonating on impact.

Tremors pulsed through the Scourge from his violent entrance but he paid them no heed. The ship would suffer more than that by the time he was done. Standing in a small hangar bay, Dextanic watched with a smile as the door to his right slid open. Three soldiers, drawn by the explosion, entered with their weapons raised.

Fury and adrenaline pulsed through Dex’s veins. With a preternatural leap, he bounded high into the air, channeling his genetically modified powers as he did. Dark hallucinations entered the mind of the middle soldier, convincing him that his friends were demons. The already panicking trooper screamed and fired at the man on his right, killing him instantly. Before he could turn to mow down the other one, the third soldier ended his life with a point-blank shot to the back.

All this took place in the span of five heartbeats. Just as the second soldier died, Dex landed by the survivor and wrapped his enormous hand around the man’s throat. All the trooper could manage was a gasp before Dex hurled him like a spear at one of the docked starfighters. The soldier smashed into the ship hard enough to warp the steel, putting him down for good.

The humming vibrations of the Scourge’s engines whined, then shut down altogether. Dex wondered if he’d accidentally hit a fuse box, but then realized he couldn’t possibly have stopped the engines from here. Moments later the PA system crackled to life, and an automated voice called out: “Warning! Life support systems have been deactivated. Two hours of breathable air remain.”

Dex turned sharply and headed for the exit. The news didn’t frighten him in the slightest. In two hours’ time he would have the ship torn apart. The Varrcarans had no idea who they were messing with.

But they were about to find out.

A lopsided grin curled across Tola’s lips as he watched the events unfolding through the infrared security cameras. Things were going better than he could have hoped: both the bounty hunter and the Latoroth were making a move, and a path of bodies lay in their wake.

Now I’d better work on finding the factory installation.

He opened an emergency supply footlocker and found a lasertorch, a smartphone, a flashlight, and a dagger inside. Tola took all four objects, using the lasertorch first to burn through his cuffs, freeing his hands to work more quickly.

The console in the room didn’t have the files he needed, but it was hooked into a central computer network with the rest of the ship. Tola smiled; that was a lucky break indeed. Normally capital ships were designed for each console to be operated independently, hooked into various relays to remove functionality if something went wrong. The Varrcarans were either arrogant or foolish to believe that wouldn’t be a problem.

Amateurs.

Hacking into the network was a breeze. Tola scoured the files as quickly as he could, looking for any reference to the facility manufacturing the specialized armor on the planet below. His search field brought up exactly what he was hoping for, and Tola accessed the confidential document.

He sighed as he read over the material. The information the Earth Alliance had given him, and even what he’d gathered on his own, had all been fake. Locations of dummy factories across the Milky Way were all that this dreadnought contained. The real facility was still a secret, probably classified at the highest level.

That explains why the Varrcarans didn’t hesitate to fire on the planet below; there’s nothing there.

Tola frowned; the Earth Alliance wouldn’t send a fleet without the target they were looking for—which meant Tola would have to find a way off the dreadnought himself. He still hadn’t given up hope of finding the true factory of the plasma-resistant armor, though. Plugging the smartphone into the computer, Tola downloaded all the files so he could sift through them in greater detail later. Perhaps somewhere in the cluster of data was a clue as to where the factory might be.

One of the security feeds caught his attention. The alien was ignoring the path Tola had laid out for him. Instead he used some sort of power to destroy each door Tola sealed. At this rate, he would be nearing the cell block control room any minute. An enraged Biomancer was the last thing Tola wanted knocking on his door.

A prompt popped up on the terminal screen, warning Tola of a computer specialist on the command bridge who was trying to override him. Tola grinned as he watched the man work through the security feed.

You’re going to have to do better than that.

Unable to tear down the firewall, the specialist looked at the commander and said, “Someone’s hacked the network—I can’t regain control, sir.”

The commander nodded and then spoke into his wrist-communicator. “Jenshi, code brown. I repeat, code brown.”

What’s code brown?

Tola flipped through the camera feeds in rapid succession. But he was too late; just as he switched to the engine room, he saw someone disconnecting a series of wires.

The ship’s engines died abruptly, leaving them trapped in Moaz’s orbit. Tola leaned back in his chair, somewhat relieved it hadn’t been worse; he didn’t want them to leave the system anyway.

A glance at the surveillance panel startled him. Someone’s face was hovering within centimeters of one of the cameras. It was the commander. His unwavering gray eyes seemed to pierce Tola as if he were standing right in front of him.

“Whoever you are . . . we are ready to die for our cause. Are you?”

And then, as if the commander had planned it to punctuate his point, the ship’s automated voice kicked in.

“Warning! Life support systems have been deactivated. Two hours of breathable air remain.”