Captain Wilson “Jaz” Jarek had seen many ships in his years flying between planets. He was Volkyrian, and like many who called the Twilight Sectors home, he had grown up on his family’s space cruiser. He had seen everything from fat-bellied cargo transports to sleek, moon-orbiting yachts. Ships with integrated artificial intelligence and spectrium cold-cores. Vessels with half-dead reactors and nothing but rotting seals to hold out the vacuum. He considered himself a savvy spacer, given his wealth of experience.
In all his thirty-three years, though, he had never seen a ship like the one before him.
It was a punchy little craft no longer than forty meters—and he was sure, he had stepped out the measurement twice—but it had the tell-tale hump of a slipdrive cresting its frame, with its iridescent spectrium emitters sparkling under the sun. Rigid frames of armoring sat at odd angles to the glowing metal of the slipdrive, though no armor could completely protect one. The ship was shaped like a crouching raptor, its wings raised on the verge of its takeoff leap. The slipdrive shimmered in the middle of its back, near where the cockpit and main fuselage met. The wings curved downward, and a pair of circular engines sat in their widest intersection. The design was unrecognizable, but the engines’ thrusters were highly advanced.
The tail of the raptor swept back to a wide stabilizer meant for atmosphere. Even with advanced thrust on both wings, aerodynamic resistance was a problem any dropship had to contend with, and this craft’s sleek lines were designed to take every advantage. It resembled a crouching raptor because raptors had evolved to rule the winds.
Between the shoulders of this sleek hunting craft and the stabilizer of its tail was a long flat area meant as a platform. At its end sat a repeating plasma cannon, and by the look of the firing mechanism, it could be shot by hand or with automatic targeting. It was always hard to tell the caliber of a plasma weapon—they were frequently modified with barrel radiators and every manner of customization—but the massive charge canister and the triple barrels said that the caliber wasn’t important. That gun could burn through steel, never mind the charred mess it would make of a person.
Defying all laws of good design sense, the ship also had a cargo bay—it opened to the rear, right in the raptor’s backside.
There were no markings on her, and the finish was an almost neutral matte blue. She had no registration numbers and no flags. Something about the lack of numbers made her posture more threatening, as if the crouch in her design was predatory.
Everything about the ship screamed espionage.
A ship of that size shouldn’t have a slipdrive. Nothing under fifty meters could carry the weight of energy harvesters and a shielded reactor, not without sacrificing important systems. Dropships were made to drop from cruisers, not slipstream under their own power.
Jaz frowned at his toes, marking his position in line with the rear of the ship. He had marched its length to measure it one more time, even accounting for the upward slope of the wide stabilizer. He peered upward, shaking his head at the wing. Even if he took an extra step—easily one and a half meters—the vessel would fall short of the standard length.
Liam Kubiak, his best friend and chief engineer, approached from his own circuit of the dropship.
“What do you think?” Jaz said, shading his eyes from the midday sun.
Liam shook his head. “Be damned if this ship isn’t forty meters at the most, Captain. It makes me mistrust my eyes, but I know my pace. It’s forty-point-three at the most.”
“Oh? You calibrated your feet this morning?” Jaz gave his long-time friend a dubious smirk. “The nose is lower than the tail—it’s damn near sitting on the ground. Maybe if you measured her from nose to stabilizer, on an angle, she’d make fifty meters.”
“It’s possible.” Liam grinned. “She looks like a hunter. Also, those skids she’s resting on are Dominion design. I’ve only seen those inner shock joints on Revealer ships.”
“No way this is a Dominion dropship,” Jarek said. “The villagers here are called the Awakened Few. They worship their own gods, and so they refuse to worship the Prime. You know what Revealers do to heretics, right? If the Dominion had found them, there’d be no village.”
Liam huffed through his nose, scowling at the ground. “That’s why we’re here, after all.”
“What’s bothering you, Liam?”
Liam shook his head, glaring at the ship. “Ever since we started working for the League, we’ve been on one questionable task after another.”
“I thought you enjoyed it.”
Liam snorted. “Oh, I’m fine with raiding Dominion supply lines. We’ve shot at them for years, and that’s no problem for me. But at least the raiding was… well, I guess it wasn’t honest, exactly, but it was straightforward. Now, we’re never sure of our mission, never know our enemies. That’s the problem with working for spies. They don’t trust anyone, so they tell us nothing. Everything is wrapped in secrecy.”
Jaz winced. “I’m not overjoyed with the subterfuge. But we’re still fighting the war, just… differently.”
“That sounds like a line from recruiting spam,” Liam said. “We should go back to patrolling the Twilight Sector, maybe fly the far regions. Lots of Dominion incursions, and we’d have the spaceport at Serria for resupply. Your uncle would treat us like princes there, and you know it.”
Jaz snorted. “You just miss the women. Is that why you’re so uptight? You have a cycle, Liam. Always have.”
“A cycle?” Liam rolled his eyes. “You make me sound like the moons. And sure, I’d love the occasional opportunity to chat with a new woman. I’m a man, aren’t I?”
“Are you?”
Liam gave Jaz a playful punch in the arm. “It’s nothing to do with my leisure time. I’m trying to say something serious here. Doesn’t this ship give you a creepy feeling? A sense of danger?”
“Maybe.” Jaz turned to face the dropship, shaking his head at its odd design. “But I want to hear your reasons first. What bothers you about it?”
Liam turned to glare at the vessel. “First, that someone wired it for a Balance pilot in the first place. Why would such a small ship need to slipstream at all? Have you seen the energy harvesters on Nightfall? They’re half the size of this entire ship, easy. Where did the mad bastards who designed this thing fit all the technology?”
Jaz nodded. “I wondered the same thing. And that means one of the agents whom the villagers captured—”
“Is a bloody Fluxweaver,” Liam finished, shaking his head. “A Balance, too. The rebels should trade him back to the League Intelligence Service for a payday. No way they just let one of their prized pilots die on a backwater like Veltara.”
“Let’s not give them any ideas,” Jarek muttered. “I still have to figure out what happened here, negotiate our contacts’ release, and meet with whoever-the-shit they’re supposed to find. The briefing said three passengers, but it didn’t mention a fancy dropship.”
Liam frowned. “Where are we taking them?”
“Some spot in the outer solar system.” Jaz jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “A place where one rocky piece of ice hovers near another.”
“Far enough out that Dominion sensors don’t pick up slipstream signatures.” Liam narrowed his eyes. “We’re meeting with a League Frigate?”
Jaz nodded again.
“Damn,” Liam said, crossing his arms. “I hate these clandestine meetings. How do we know the Dominion isn’t watching the outer solar system? If I were them, I’d be waiting to ambush people like us, especially if it meant capturing a League Frigate.”
“Maybe they’re more worried about the ground war here.” Jaz looked over the expanse of wild mountains. It was a beautiful planet, despite the scars the Dominion’s occupation had left on the surface. “The natives have been fighting them for years. The Revealer strategists are probably shitting their pants over this conflict, hoping the Prime doesn’t kill them for incompetence.”
“Here’s another question,” Liam said, stabbing an accusatory finger at the dropship, “why are we carrying this thing in Nightfall? If it has a slipdrive and it can go sub-dimensional, then why contract our ship at all? Is the drive working? Is it on the verge of, say, melting down?”
“You’re the mechanic,” Jaz said. “I pay you to tell me those things.”
Liam scoffed. “You pay me to keep Nightfall floating. And I’m an engineer.”
“What’s different about it?” Jaz hooked his thumbs through the blaster harness on his shoulders and nodded at the ship. “This contraption looks, as far as I can tell, vaguely mechanical. Why don’t you open a panel, root around in its guts, and tell me how it works?”
Liam motioned toward the vessel. “Follow me—I want to show you something.”
Jaz shrugged and followed Liam around the raptor’s tail to its other side. They found Germaine, Liam’s massive, muscle-bound brother, hugging the ship’s outer hull like it was a giant dog he’d lost as a child. Jaz paused in mid-step, shooting Liam a questioning grin.
Liam only sighed, shaking his head at his brother, and continued walking. “Ignoring what the ugliest son of my mother is doing—”
“You’re the ugliest one,” rumbled Germaine, displaying a wide grin full of white teeth. “Also the one I could crush between my hands if I wanted.”
Liam snorted. “You wouldn’t crush a wasp if it stung you, Gremlin. Why in the Night are you pressing your face to the hull?”
“Finish what you’re saying first.” Germaine winked. “I’m doing an experiment.”
Liam turned his back on Germaine, rolling his eyes again, and Germaine stuck out his tongue. Jaz snickered until Liam motioned him closer with an impatient wave. With a raised eyebrow, Liam ran a delicate finger over the raptor’s outer skin.
“Touch it,” he said. “Tell me what you think.”
Sighing, Jaz stepped over to the bird and obliged his friend. Most dropships had a thick, colored coating on their hulls. Anything built to break atmosphere needed protection from erosion and corrosion, and a coating of heat-resistant polymer had been the best solution since antiquity. Most people who owned spaceships—governments, corporations, and privateers—took great pleasure in their color schemes. Dressing the outside of a spaceship was the best part of owning it. No captain could resist the urge to customize, from teenagers painting flames down the nose of their first airbikes to companies emblazoning their logo across the sides of massive spaceliners. His own ship, Nightfall, was a glossy black with gray highlights.
The off-blue skin of the strange dropship, however, was dull, gritty, and alien to Jaz’s fingers. He recoiled from the unfamiliar sensation, but he returned his palm after his surprise faded. Frowning, he pressed his skin to the hull, trying to place what set off his instincts. He rapped a knuckle against the ship, and it returned a dull, non-metallic thud. He scratched at the finish with his fingernail, but his instincts told him there was no coating at all. The matte finish was a native property of the material used to construct the bulkhead.
Jaz looked up at Liam. “What is this thing made of?”
Liam scraped at the hull’s skin with his fingernail. “I don’t know. It feels sandy, doesn’t it? Like a high-density plastic?”
“Plastic?” Captain Jarek shuddered. “I don’t know any spacer who’d set out in a plastic ship. The very thought makes my insides twist up like I’m already sucking vacuum.”
“You and me both.” Liam shook his head, frowning up at the craft. “It seems like it’s one piece, doesn’t it? When you touch a real dropship, you get a sense of the multitude of things underneath the skin. The carbosteel lattice, the wiring, the panels, the robotic motors. This thing… it just feels like a toy.”
“It doesn’t absorb heat, either,” said Germaine, his smile still pressed against the craft. “How long has this thing been sitting here?”
“Two Veltaran days, if I remember,” Jaz offered. “The Awakened Few won’t use comms, so somebody set up an automatic beacon on the landing field. According to the data packet it sent us, the last ship to land was two days ago.”
Germaine nodded. “It’s been under the setting sun all afternoon. The skin should be as hot as a griddle, but it’s cool to the touch. It makes me think of those caves that Pa showed us when we were kids—remember those?”
Liam smiled. “I remember. They were cool year-round, no matter the outside temperature. Is that why you’re hugging it?”
“Well, if it won’t absorb heat from the sun, I wanted to try my body heat.”
“How many times have you checked your results?”
“I haven’t yet.” Germaine smirked. “I was waiting for you to return so you could check it.”
Liam’s face twisted with disgust. “I’m not touching that thing after you’ve been rubbing on it like an old girlfriend! Check your own body heat, weirdo.”
“It’s a legitimate experiment, and I can’t test it myself,” Germaine said. “I need an objective observer!”
“Not happening in this lifetime.” Liam dismissed his brother and returned his attention to Jaz. “Look at where the wings extend from the hull—there should be joints there, but this thing looks like it’s all one piece. You couldn’t mold something like that from carbosteel, and you couldn’t layer it, either. There are tensile strength concerns, not to mention the forces exerted on the hull when it goes sub-dimensional. Whatever material they built this thing from, it’s no metal I’ve seen.”
“Maybe they carved it from a single piece,” Germaine said, his face still pressed to the side of the ship. “Hollowed it out with a thousand tiny robots working from an A.I. controller.”
“Spoken like a mechanic and not an engineer.” Liam sighed again, crossing his arms, and nodded toward the top of the dropship. “You saw what’s sitting up top, didn’t you, Cap?”
“I did.” Jaz stepped even with his friend and turned to regard the ship. “Did you crawl up there?”
Liam gave him an injured look. “I am the chief engineer. I’ve been over this thing like a curious spider.”
“What do you think about the gun?”
Liam let out an all-suffering sigh. “It’s the real thing, I’ll tell you that. Triple barrel, rotating action, robotic assistance. It’s got handles, too, so that means there’s an interrupt mode where it can be fired manually. The whole platform is wired with spectrium, but I don’t know why.”
“It’s a plasma cannon?”
Liam nodded. “And given the size of the charge pack, it’s good for at least fifty thousand rounds. I’ll bet we find more charge packs when we get inside this beast, too.”
Jaz stepped away from the dropship, shaking his head. He frowned at the gun—it was an odd position for a turret. A ship meant to engage in air-to-air combat would have its guns mounted in the fore. This one was mounted up top, like a ground-based weapon system. The best place for any ship to be in an atmospheric engagement was above the enemy, and this craft was physically unable to take advantage of that basic tenet.
“So, we’ve got a dropship built for atmo, but it has a slipdrive,” he said, ticking off each item with his fingers. “It’s made of exotic material, and though it’s small enough to make your backside pucker if you went sub-dimensional, it’s obviously built for that.”
Liam snorted. “It has to be running technology we don’t understand.”
“And,” Jaz continued, acknowledging his friend’s point with a nod, “the gun is in the wrong place for a warship. I’ll tell you one thing, though.” Jaz smirked and waggled his eyebrows. “I’d like to fire it from the deck in flight. That sounds exhilarating.”
Liam shuddered. “It would be exhilarating to fall screaming to your death. Doesn’t make it a good idea to jump. I’m no weapons expert, but the bore on those barrels is larger than my thumb. That’s a big charge, Jaz. The recoil might kick me right off the edge.”
Germaine laughed and peeled himself from the hull. “You couldn’t even move the turret with those noodles you call arms. Now, come here and touch the bird. See if it’s warm.”
A wicked grin spread across Liam’s face. “Is that what you said to your last lady friend, Gremlin? Come here and touch the bird?”
“Come on!” Germaine gestured at the hull. “I can’t test it myself—my hands will be the same temperature as the skin, if the heat transferred. I need your cold baby hands for a true measurement.”
Liam’s smile only sharpened. “Is that what you said to your—”
“Just get over here!” Germaine lurched for his brother, and they devolved into a laughing dance as the hulking Germaine tried to wrap his hands around the much lither Liam. After some snickering and banter, Liam rolled his eyes and agreed to touch the spot where his brother had hugged the vessel.
He frowned as his palm touched it, then he tried the back of his hand. “Damn—your addled brain was on to something, Gremlin. It’s cool to the touch.”
Germaine crossed his massive arms, beaming. “Told you it was a legitimate experiment.”
“Yeah, you’re a real scientist, Grem.” Liam snorted. “You should go to one of those weird robotics academies. I bet there’s all kinds of strange things to cuddle with.”
Germaine winked at Jaz. “Funny enough, strange things is an accurate description of your dating preferences.”
“You’re the one hugging the dropship.”
Germaine shrugged. “She’s prettier than your last paramour. I mean, look at those lines. She’s sleek, and did you notice the thrusters on the wings? Fully articulated, massless energy thrust. Those are starship engines, but they’re the smallest little buggers I’ve ever seen! I’m dying to get inside and check out the energy harvesters.”
“What harvesters?” Liam’s eyes crawled over the ship, his mind probably whirling with arcane calculations. “The belly’s three meters tall, floor to ceiling, and there’s a cargo door on the aft end. There’s an airbike sitting near the edge of the landing field, and I’ll bet you a hundred credits that it goes with this beauty. Aren’t the people in the village here supposed to be superstitious about technology? They wouldn’t touch the airbike, so it must fit inside.”
“It’s a two-seater.” Jaz waved a hand at the distant airbike, holding his arms wide as if to measure the size of the little speeder. “Side-by-side, with a cargo compartment on the back. So, it’s wider than a personal speeder. It’s almost like a mini-Skiff.”
Liam crossed his arms, his eyes narrowing further. “If all that’s inside the belly is a cargo bay… I suppose that makes sense. They set up lots of military cargo ships that way. But I could have sworn… I mean, damn, where did they put the harvesters? It takes a lot of spectrium, and they have to be in a certain shape to work in the first place! So where in the Night…”
Liam wandered away, muttering to himself as he gazed up at the wings extending from the dropship’s center. He peered at the circular thrusters embedded in them, scratching his chin, and continued to grumble as he stalked around the front. Jaz shared a knowing smile with Germaine.
It was best to give Liam time when he was brainstorming.
Jaz took a deep breath of the clean mountain air, closing his eyes as he exhaled. It tasted of the sky and smelled like the woodsmoke rising from the chimneys of the nearby village. Every planet tasted a bit different, depending on the elements in the air. It could be acidic, sweet, or even stomach-turning, depending on the planet’s ecosystem. Veltara was a pristine world, recently born in the time-line of this frontier system. The air was thick with minerals, rain, and the spores of a thousand plants. It pulled at something instinctive to breathe air like that, though a spacer’s true calling was the void.
The village beyond the landing field was more refuge than municipality. It had thirty meager buildings clinging to a hidden piece of ground high in the rugged mountains. It was home to families who clutched one another and stared with mistrust at outsiders. The maps from League Intelligence called it Rampart because of the sheer cliff face protecting the southern approach. Rampart, however, was not a town where children were born and grandfathers had been buried.
It was the last refuge of a pursued, dying people.
After the Prime—the mad “god” of the Revealed Dominion—had declared the Eternity Line’s expansion, claiming entire sectors of space, his armies executed a strategic advance to make his proclamation a reality. For generations, a stretch of barely-inhabited space at the edge of the galaxy’s spiral arm had been a buffer between the Revealed Dominion and the League of Sovereign Worlds. The planets in the unclaimed sectors were rich with resources, but they were far from the core League systems, and its republican bureaucracy had ignored the region since its founding. Millions of outcasts, from criminals to religious minorities, had carved out homes in the dangerous hinterlands.
Dominion forces had made a sweeping, decisive advance through the unprepared star systems. They’d gained a foothold with relative ease, and within a standard year, had established bases near League trade routes. Dominion Cruisers started taking civilian ships, which demanded a response from the League.
The outcasts on the frontier worlds were caught between the two galactic powers.
Veltara was a key planet in the Dominion’s advance, with its wealth of resources and population of possible slaves. The Revealers interned their prisoners in several large labor camps. Refugees who had escaped the invasion clung to villages like Rampart. They lived under the constant threat of Dominion ships darkening their skies, and the Revealers relished in tracking down dissidents.
Valuable information, however, could be gathered in the beleaguered villages, so the League Intelligence Service invested in keeping them alive. Many groups of refugees got paid by the Service to take part in their operations, and they made an unintentional fortune by trading in everything from information to sabotage. The hardier inhabitants had formed militias, jumping at the chance to be paid and armed by the League.
For the people of Rampart—a group of religious believers called the Awakened Few—the renewed fighting had brought a harrowing exodus as Revealers captured or killed them wherever they were found. Scattered bands had escaped northward, but like the people who called Rampart home, most found themselves in pockets of terrain where escape was impossible. When the enemy could appear anywhere on the planet, flight was a temporary solution.
“Strange, isn’t it, Cap?” Germaine stepped to Jaz’s side, giving his shoulder a friendly bump. The two men were close in height, but Jaz was leaner than the hulking, dark-skinned Germaine. “Why do these people stay here? It’s right in the most dangerous part of the front. This isn’t their ancestral home.”
“The Awakened Few are superstitious about flux technology. They won’t board a ship with a slipdrive—Night, they probably won’t board anything with a cold-matrix. For them, escape isn’t an option.”
“Well… that’s crazy.” Germaine shook his head, a sorrowful expression on his face. “There are plenty of worlds out there. Just one trip, and they could be on the other side of the galaxy. The League won’t pry the Revealers off this planet for years. It’s just a matter of time before Dominion soldiers round all these people up and make them slaves.”
“According to the Prime,” Jaz said in a deadpan tone, “service is never slavery.”
“He also says he’s a god, so I don’t trust him as a source.” Germaine spat to the side. “If he said he was a chicken, they’d lock him up for a madman. A god, though? He says that, and folks line up to worship him.”
“The galaxy is a senseless place sometimes.” Jarek nodded toward the cluster of ramshackle homes. “Take Rampart, for instance. The Awakened Few are superstitious about fluxlight, and they’re pacifists. But this war has forced them to compromise their way of life. They can’t trust the militias that roam the mountains—just because they’re fighting the Dominion doesn’t mean they won’t rob and kill their way through the village. Lots of that happening out in the hills, too, though it doesn’t raise the League’s collective eyebrows. Nightfall could take this entire village to Telaran if she needed. So, why do you think the League hasn’t contracted us to rescue them?”
“Why not?”
Jaz shook his head. “They’re more valuable here. It provides the Service a point of contact for the agents in the hills, the insurgents, the militias. The townspeople live under the constant threat of danger, and they’re desperate for any help they can get, even if it’s just pallets of food and a few castoff plasma rifles. In return, the Intelligence Service has a place to dump their agents, collect information—”
“Or drop off mysterious ships.” Germaine turned to shoot the dropship another appreciative look. “That seems callous of the shining republic, doesn’t it? These cloak-and-dagger types can be cold bastards.”
“The Few might not leave Rampart, but you’d think the League would offer them refuge.” Jaz shook his head. “But no, their priorities are different.”
Jaz turned to search for Liam when a flash of bright fabric caught his eye. A girl stood at the far edge of the landing field, eyes locked on the sleek little ship. She had the flowing forehead tattoo of the Awakened Few, and she stood with one hand idly touching her lips. Fresh markings—flowing designs and curved script—decorated the back of her exposed palm and her forearm. She wore a patterned robe in bright yellow and blue, and the thin fabric whipped away from her body in the mountain gusts. Even from a distance, Jaz could sense the intensity of her regard.
Germaine smiled when he saw the girl. “Who’s the local? Has she been watching us the whole time?”
“I don’t think she’s watching us.” Jaz glanced from the ship to the girl and back again. “She’s interested in the dropship.”
“She best not touch it.” Germaine leaned close and lowered his voice, as if the distant girl could hear his rumbling tone. “I’ve heard the Few do terrible things to members who touch fluxwrought machines. Dymon told me they’ll chop off your fingers for taking vegetables from a float-cart!”
Jaz shook his head. “Dymon is full of shit, Germaine. I keep telling you to stop listening to his stories.”
“I think he’s right about this one.”
“You think pacifists would cut off people’s fingers?” Jaz raised an eyebrow. “I think that’s what those tattoos on her hands mean—she touched fluxwrought technology. Recently, too. They look irritated.”
“Why do they tattoo people like that?”
“Lets everyone around her know that she’s infected,” Jaz said. “I bet nobody in town will come near her.”
Germaine raised a tentative hand in greeting. The girl fled in a flurry of patterned fabric and dark hair.
“That’s… that’s just odd, Cap.” Germaine winced at the girl’s retreat. “Infected by what?”
“Fluxlight, I suppose.” Jaz spotted a man in a white robe striding their way. He delivered a harsh word to the girl before schooling his face to something more friendly and resuming his purposeful walk. “The village elder is coming this way. Maybe you can ask him.”
Germaine sighed, crossing his arms. “I have a bad feeling about today, Jaz.”
“You and Liam stay here,” Jaz said as he stepped out to meet the elder. “Keep looking over this ship. If we’re meant to take her with us, I want to make sure she’s not going to explode.”
“Heard, Captain.” Germaine tapped a finger to his temple in a mock salute. “Where are you going?”
Jaz let out an irritated breath. “To salvage something from this epic screw-up. Keep an eye on the southern horizon. The Dominion Fleet are still haunting these skies. Have Horace bring the Skiff back to this field once they’re done offloading the food. It makes the Few nervous.”
“Will do, Cap.” Germaine nodded. “Good luck.”
Forcing a smile, Jaz strode out to meet Rampart’s leader.
__________
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