Page 26

Chapter 26

Yorix

I ’d failed, both as a mate and a warrior. If I ever got back to the Fleet, I’d have to resign. I could see that now. I’d preferred my work in the lab and while I continued my fight training, I’d made some glaring mistakes and it had cost me my whole reason for breathing.

I watched as the pod headed towards the moon I had planned to explore, turning my head to glare at the two ships who’d refused to even try to talk with us. If we were in their space, they could have simply told us to leave! My hearts stuttered, my body going cold as they streaked away into hyperspace.

“Lynn!” I howled, beating my fists uselessly against the clear window. I raged until exhaustion overtook me, losing consciousness as my pod entered the atmosphere. When I came to, I found my pod had, miraculously, landed in a natural clearing and was in one piece. I looked for the catch to release me from the pod, finally locating it but ending up frustrated as it appeared to be stuck. After some not so gentle persuasion, the door hissed open and I took in a lungful of the humid air, It smelled of wet dirt and vegetation, some of it rotting. It wasn’t an entirely pleasant smell, but neither was it the worst thing to have ever assaulted my nose. I stepped out, taking note of the odd springy ground covering, and walked around the edge of the clearing to check it out while stretching my limbs.

It definitely appeared as if they had jettisoned me down here and not followed, which was odd. In fact, none of their behavior made any kind of sense to me at all, from the way they suddenly appeared and began firing to disable my ship, to the way they tried shooting at us after capture, and then there was the weird thing with the warrior’s arm I’d cut off. No blood and he’d simply fallen down after which the rest of his cohort simply stood there.

Still, they had my Bride, and I needed to get her back. Once she was safe, I could grovel before her, begging her for forgiveness for not having kept her safe the way a warrior should. I also needed to get word back to the Fleet about the attack so they would know this region was probably already claimed. Hopefully our little visit hadn't inadvertently sparked a war. Though those hrecksers deserved everything they got for how they reacted to finding our craft here. It was obvious we were no war craft!

I stalked over to the pod, checking the console to see if anything resembled a distress signal array. I tapped my kunnarskyn, not surprised to find no connection to Xeranos or any other of our sentient AIs used throughout our part of the galaxy. I quickly opened the diagnostic subroutine we used for analyzing tech, knowing it would tell me if the pod was emitting any kind of a signal. It was and I quickly zeroed in on the component I was looking for. It was broadcasting on the wrong frequency, but after a lot of painstaking effort, I figured out how to change it to broadcast on ours.

By now the sun was low in the sky and several hours had to have passed. I hoped I was correct and that help was only a day or two away. If I wasn’t and we had to wait five or more days, the trail would go cold. The hyperdrive signature would dissipate and my Lynn would be gone forever.

No! The universe would not have brought my starshine to me only to tear her away now. I had to trust in the same fate that brought us together. My stomach rumbled and I sighed, knowing I had to eat but mentally, wanting not to as I felt undeserving. During my rummaging, I’d come across some very dusty looking packs of some kind of ration bars, so I pulled one out and opened it. It was as dry and flavorless as the packet had alluded to and I found myself wondering just how long these had been in there.The way they crumbled made me think they were well past their best by date though still edible. Then I thought of my starshine and wondered what they were doing to her. Were they hurting her? Had they fed her? Why had they kept her but jettisoned me?

A bright light streaks through the darkening sky and I stiffened. It had slowed and was now moving in a slow zigzagging search pattern.

I reached for my sword, looking for a place to hide and found it beneath a giant fern. The strange craft must have locked onto my beacon despite me changing the frequency. I needed to use the element of surprise and catch them off guard. Perhaps I could take the ship and fly it back, find my beloved, and use it to escape. If not, I prayed that they would lock me up alongside her for I would rather be with her than without, no matter our circumstances.

The ship slowed, spotting my escape pod and instead of landing, hovered above it while a door opened in the side and a tall being jumped out. He was not armoured like the others were and his holstered weapon was not of the same design. He had ears, a nose, and whiskers which reminded me of Charlie, though other than that, his skin was smooth as a human’s, though a pale shade of blue, with his braided hair a darker shade of blue.

“Ho!” he called out, looking about, looking concerned rather than hostile.

I decided to chance that he was another alien species who happened to be in close proximity for whatever reason. When I got back, I was going to let the Commandeer know that the surveyors had done a schordo job of checking for sentient traffic in the area.

I came out, hands held wide. A look of relief crossed the male’s face, and he copied my gesture. He looked me up and down, assessing, then took a box off of the utility belt he wore. He mimed me speaking, pointing at it an. Ah, a translation device. It needed enough vocabulary for it to decode my speech. I began by telling him my name, rank, and position within the Fleet, and the story of how I came to be marooned here. That apparently wasn’t enough, so I then described our wedding, followed by a description of Klora and Adrian’s. I’d just gotten to the part where we were ordering from the shrimp truck when the device beeped. He held a hand up to stop me and spoke. “I am Hreskuk of the Narldu Cohort. We patrol this area seeking the Ghost Fleet and noticed your beacon. Though it was difficult to pinpoint as it suddenly stopped.”

“I changed the frequency in hopes that my people would find me. I am Yorix, of the Mylos Fleet. I was here with my bride celebrating our recent mating with a view of the beautiful nebula.”

He looked most alarmed. “Your mate? Where is she now?”

“They pushed me into the pod and kept her,” I bit out.

He nodded. “They do that sometimes.”

“You know who they are?”

“Ships with an invisibility cloak, armored bots?”

“Bots…that makes sense,” I muttered.

“Uh huh. You met the Ghost Fleet. This area used to be overrun by them, but my Cohort and our allies the Grikgr have been hunting them down, destroying them as we come across them. We will send a message out, telling our people they have prisoners and to not destroy any ships they may come across until they’ve offloaded them.”

“Offloaded them? Do you know where they are going? And do they leave them unharmed?” He nodded. “There’s a ruined system two days' journey from here. There’s a decrepit space station that’s still in orbit and atmosphere thanks to maintenance droids who keep it in repair by cannibalizing parts of the interior and ships the bots capture and leave there, presumably for salvage. They offload prisoners there and leave. They are unharmed, though complaining of the horrible rations and stale water they were given aboard the Ghost Fleet’s ships.”

”“What? They leave them there? How do they eat? Do they leave them rations?”

“They don’t, so we routinely visit there once a week to sweep.” he grimaced. “We had to provide space burials for those we found there before we knew what they were doing.”

“How often do they leave people?”

“It varies, but we've rescued various species there at least two, maybe three times a month. And in case you’re wondering, they are called the Ghost Fleet because they are the sole surviving remnants from an ancient war. We think they were patrol ships and if they don’t recognize your ship’s transponder as being one of theirs, they move to capture. We believe the space station was where prisoners were processed before sending them to the planet below. It’s hard to tell, as some kind of weapon appears to have been used that decimated everything on it.”

“So they are leaving them there for people who will never come to process them.”

“Yes. it’s blind programming, though occasionally we run across someone like you who gets away. Neverheard of them jettisoning anyone in one of their escape pods though.”

“I’m not even sure now why they have those, if they are all bots.”

“Presumably once upon a time, they had someone overseeing them, a small crew of organics.”

I nodded. That made sense. “Perhaps it was a glitch, but I think perhaps it was the stars smiling fortune down upon me and my Bride. If they’d taken us both, you might never have known they had prisoners and blown up their ships.”

“True. This area is uninhabited for several parsecs so we would not have expected them to have grabbed anyone.”

I bared my teeth in a smile. “See?”

He gestured up at his ship.

“Mind if we land? If you come aboard, we’ll take you to the station to rescue your mate.”

I nodded. If it was a trick, I had my sword and hidden dagger. Something told me I wouldn’t need them, though, and that perhaps, I’d just found my people a new ally.