ULTIMATUM FROM HUNTERS: DEMAND ALL HUMANS BE TURNED OVER ELSE QUOTE SWARM OF SWARMS ENDQUOTE WILL RAID KNOWN HUMAN LOCATIONS. ALL SHIPS, STATIONS CARRYING HUMAN PASSENGERS ADVISED: JETTISON IMMEDIATELY. NOTIFICATION ENDS.
The message was succinct; its timing was undeniable – the human, Adrian Saunders, had managed to enrage the Hunters beyond any point they had ever been angered before, and now there was every chance that they would make another attack on the Zhadersil, and soon.
Treoffa’s chances of success were looking a little bit dimmer than they had a few moments ago. The only thing she had in her favour was that there was no way the slave-soldiers could have learned about this yet.
“What to do?” she asked herself, although she felt rather more out of her depth than she was letting herself admit. As far as she could work out, she had a few options.
First, she could run away. That would be ideal for survival, but it would also be giving up on the Zhadersil entirely, and may lead to the ancient starship falling into the hands of the Hunters.
Second, she could maintain operations here, but drop Adrian Saunders off with a Directorate patrol. Then she’d be rid of the human, but the Hunters would have no reason to give up on the Zhadersil and she would be completely without any real protection.
Thirdly, she could defy the Directorate – risking her own future at this point – and heal Adrian Saunders, knowing that he was still the biggest target for Hunters in the entire galaxy, and knowing that he had limited capacity to defend them in the short term.
Three options, all terrible. “Is this what it’s like to be him? she wondered aloud. “Every option is terrible. Every possibility is completely… ‘fucked’.”
She reclined back into her chair, her eyes closed in thought. This was exactly the sort of situation that needed some sort of mad plan to get out of with all her victories intact, but she was a creature of logic, and what she needed was a deranged savage.
“What do I know?” she asked herself, opening her eyes. “I know that the Directorate have ordered Bekmer’s crew, and therefore me, to hand over the human. I know that that human has single-handedly defeated a Hunter invasion. I know that if he’s not here, I’m likely to find myself the target of another without anyone here to do the fighting.”
And there it was. The idea.
The completely, wonderfully insane idea.
+++++
“Let me be blunt with you,” Treoffa said to the assembled soldiers. “I have been ordered to turn Adrian Saunders over to the Directorate.”
They stared at her, glancing at one another as though waiting to see who would speak first. Treoffa didn’t give them the opportunity to interrupt. “I have been delaying, but I can no longer do this.”
“The fact that such an action would be reprehensible notwithstanding,” Chir said, “as well as the fact that I at least would prevent such a thing, how would you intend to reach Directorate space? We know there are Hunters out there, and possibly pirates as well.”
“There would be that risk involved,” Treoffa replied. “Especially in light of the fact that the entire Hunter swarm have declared war on the Human race. Any world or ship harbouring a human has been threatened with annihilation.”
The stunned silence was as she had expected, fear on all their features but also determination. None of them was willing to simply give up on the human, be it from a sentimental or practical standpoint. They’d seen enough to have good reason to prefer having a human on board, regardless of the danger.
“If we can expect another Hunter attack,” Trycrur said, “it would be better to have him with us, then for them to find us undefended.”
Zripob croaked agreement. “There’s no way we can allow him to leave us undefended.”
“And yet,” Treoffa said, “if we don’t hand him over, the Directorate will undoubtedly come to fetch him. They would take the Zhadersil from me, and who knows what they would do to Adrian Saunders?”
“They might allow us to return home,” Zripob pointed out.
“You have been aboard the Zhadersil,” Treoffa replied, ready for this point. “They would not allow word of the discovery to spread.”
“You seem so sure,” Zripob said suspiciously. “Could it be that this was also your plan?”
“Originally, yes,” Treoffa admitted. “But circumstances have changed. I believe that action would be ultimately pointless.”
“So presumably you have some sort of plan?” Chir asked. “I cannot imagine why you would have called this meeting otherwise.”
“Very astute, Gaoian,” Treoffa said. “I do indeed have a plan, but I will require all of your support to pull it off.”
When Adrian Saunders awoke he was surprised to find himself in the familiar surrounds of the Zhadersil medical bay. Treoffa was hovering nearby, working at one of the monitoring consoles.
“I thought I needed to go some place else?” he asked as he assessed his condition. At the very least his eyes didn’t hurt, his skin didn’t itch, and his body didn’t ache like it was being slowly pulled apart. “I feel better, at least.”
“You are better,” Treoffa replied, coming over to him and running a hand-held scanner over his exposed skin. “Or at least better than you were. My machines kept you alive long enough for your superior healing capabilities to do their work, but you deteriorated significantly before you improved while you were unconscious. You are not fully recovered yet, but you won’t need to be stuck in here for the remainder.”
“I thought you said you didn’t have the facilities,” he said. “Did something change?”
“You could say that,” Treoffa said. “I wasn’t sure if you’d survive a natural healing process, but necessity forced my hand.”
Adrian paused, his eyes narrowing on Treoffa. “What’s happened this time?”
“Two things you need to know about,” Treoffa said. “First of all, your victory against the Hunters has seen the entire Hunter Swarm declare war against your species. They have threatened all those who harbour them.”
“You don’t seem that concerned about having me here,” Adrian noted.
“We are already their target, whether you are here or not,” Treoffa explained with characteristic bluntness. “You are a factor in our favour, and I do not wish to give you up. Which brings me to my second topic.”
“What’s this one?” Adrian asked bemusedly. “Some sort of new disaster or hope-crushing event?”
“I’ve been ordered to give you over to the Corti Directorate,” Treoffa told him. “They’ll be wanting to dissect you.”
+++++
“Think of it like a game,” Trycrur suggested. “Except if you lose you kill everyone.”
“That’s real fucking reassuring,” Adrian replied tersely, going over the controls again in his head before pressing the next button. A symbol appeared that he guessed meant ‘good job’ or ‘correct’, or something along those lines.
“Good! Now the engines would be turned on!” Trycrur told him. “You won’t get any forward momentum until…?”
Adrian thought, then pointed at the virtual control grid on the left of the simulator’s centre console. “Until I drag the dot in this direction?”
“Correct!” Trycrur said, making her best attempt at a smile. “Not too far though, because you’ll slam the ship into the bulkhead and kill everyone.”
“Fucksake,” Adrian hissed out between his teeth. “This is a lot to remember all at once.”
“Don’t you have spacecraft on your world?” Trycrur asked. “I seem to recall that your species had at least managed to get into space.”
“We do,” Adrian said, a little more defensively than he would have liked. “But we have joysticks, not stupid touch-screens with dots.”
Trycrur looked perplexed. “What’s a ‘joystick’?”
Adrian did his best to explain it to her. Then he found himself giving her a basic run-down on what he could recall of Earth’s aviation history. It was bland stuff, or it was when he told it, but she had the decency to at least look interested, although she certainly perked up when he got to the part about jetpacks.
He wondered if those would be possible in this futurists wet dream. Probably. Had anyone made them yet? It certainly didn’t look like it.
“Why am I learning all of the details, anyway?” he asked when she finally returned his attention to the simulator. “You said I could just tell the auto-pilot where to go and what to do.”
“You can do that,” she agreed, “but an auto-pilot can’t get you out of a bad situation, and it can’t react very well to unexpected events.”
He sighed. “Right, I guess we’ll keep at it then.”
+++++
“Thank you all for your assistance in this plan,” Treoffa said to the gathered soldiers. “Today we’ll be doing something really stupid, but I believe that with Adrian’s help we have a chance of pulling it off.”
Adrian shrugged. “It’s no more insane than anything I’ve done recently,” he said, “and I think it’s got a better shot of working from what you’ve told me.”
“And this time we have a contingency plan,” Chir added, gesturing towards Adrian. “Although I feel that ‘Adrian is the plan’ maybe getting a bit stale.”
“No shit?” Adrian muttered. “But I’m just the contingency plan. I don’t see why the main plan wouldn’t work. From what you’ve said everyone is shit scared of the Hunters.”
“Quite,” agreed Treoffa. “If anybody cares, we’ll be leaving Bekmer in his little cell here while we’re gone. He’ll have enough sustenance, but I’m sure you won’t be concerned if he starves a little.”
“I don’t care if he starves a lot,” Adrian said unkindly, but not undeservedly. “How long have we got before the collectors arrive at the meeting zone?”
“Five sleep cycles,” Treoffa said. “But we’ll be leaving tomorrow. Get your rest, everyone – we’ve got quite the show to set up.”
Adrian exited stasis on another Corti ship, and that was not a good sign. It meant that the handover had happened, and that the main plan had either failed, or had failed to succeed before he awakened.
No matter the case, it was time to engage he contingency plan – that being to kill everyone on board and take control of the ship.
With a gentle push he opened the pod and slipped over the side to drop onto the floor of the small room, taking what he had come to discover was called a ‘fusion sword’ with him. There was no-one around the pod, but there was a sense of tension in the air. The sense of something very important happening.
He left the room quickly to avoid an unplanned jettisoning at an inopportune time, just in case the main plan finally worked. Somewhere out there were three Hunter ships piloted by his friends, all making the demand of the Corti vessel to eject its human cargo.
That plan, had it succeeded, would have seen the Corti write Adrian off as a loss. It would have seen them all go home safely none-the-wiser.
Now it had to be Plan B.
+++++
“Those Hunters have clearly never dealt with a Sealed FTL before,” said Ship Master Crfti, gazing out into the warp corridor. “A pity about Salvage Officer Treoffa, however.”
He turned to Ship Second Tlkitz. “Make a note of that matter, Tlkitz. Treoffa did her duty to the Directorate well. Far better than that fool, Bekmer.”
“As you say, Ship Master,” replied Tlkitz immediately, and set about to do just that. “What do you think she was attempting to warn us about before her ship was overtaken by the Hunters?”
“Probably the Hunters,” Crfti said. “What else would she have to be so desperate about? I must say, however, that she was surprisingly unprofessional at the last.”
“Death by Hunter is… unsettling, Ship Master,” Tlkitz replied. Personally he couldn’t think of a worse fate to experience. To be at the mercy of an unstoppable monster who did not know the meaning of the word. Such was the source of nightmares for any intelligent young Corti with dreams of the stars.
“We will be back home soon enough, Tlkitz,” the Ship Master reassured him. “Despite their threats, there is no way that the Hunter swarm will descend upon our homeworld.”
“I am sure it is as you say, Ship Master,” Tlkitz replied, although he remained far from reassured. There had been three Hunter ships. Three! Normally nobody saw more than a single vessel at a time, and that was more than enough! Tlkitz found himself continually glancing at the warp corridor as well, but not with the smug glory that his Ship Master did. He looked at it with dread.
At least nothing had managed to get on board.
+++++
Now that he was on board the Corti vessel, Adrian took the time to be stealthy. It looked as though the crew were on high alert, but their attention was focused outward, not inward, and when he observed them from his hiding places they seemed jumpy.
Not jumpy enough to react in time when he descended upon them, his sword often cleaving through more than three at a time. He hadn’t really had the chance to use a sword on Earth, but he didn’t imagine that those varieties would cut quite so easily, nor that they would cauterize the wounds and leave the corridors bloodless.
He hid the bodies as soon as they had fallen, dragging them into adjacent storage rooms and piling them into macabre little mounds. They had little besides their Kinetic guns on them, however, and after the first few he refrained from any further strip searches.
He’d learned more about Corti anatomy than anybody ever wanted to know.
“Thirteen,” he counted, checking off the heads rather than fragmented body parts. “I wonder when they’ll start to miss them.”
+++++
The Endless Sequence was a Corti heavy scout, capable of extended exploratory or reconnaissance missions and was furnished with its own botanical facility to feed its crew of 60.
Physically it was almost as big as a light cruiser, but was twice as fast and half as deadly. It was the perfect vessel for transportation missions that valued speed over quantity.
Yet it was only because the Endless Sequence had been nearby that the Directorate had commanded them to collect the human. And it was only because the threat of punishment outweighed the threats from the Hunters that the Ship Master had complied.
“This was not,” he had explained, “an order he could afford to overlook.”
And given the speed of the vessel it was natural that they feel confident in the decision. Or at least they had until they had encountered the Hunters at the rendezvous. They had barely managed to load the human before they had appeared, and had fired their ultimatum out across all channels.
Rather than comply with the requests of such loathsome creatures, the Endless Sequence had fled with all haste, abandoning the small salvage ship to its grisly fate.
Tlkitz was fine with that much, however, if it meant not sharing that fate. He had waited some time before relaying the order for all hands to return to their usual stations, wanting to be sure of no surprises.
It was only then that he discovered the surprise: thirteen crewmen had not returned to their regular stations.
He did a quick scan, understanding why some might try and shirk their duties after such tension, and was puzzled to find all missing members hiding inside a storage room.
“What,” he asked aloud to the command deck, “is so interesting about storage compartment thirty-seven?”