Far From Home: The Complete Series (15 page)

“I’m sorry I doubted your ability and your intentions, Captain,” Swogger said.

Jessica smiled. She extended her hand, and they both shook. “And I accept your apology. Boy, do I accept it,” she said with relief.

13.

King threw back her head with a sigh. She had just walked into her quarters and unbuttoned her tunic when her bell rang.

God, there’s never a break,
she thought.

“Come,” she said.

She turned to see Dr. Clayton stood in the open doorway.

“Oh. Doctor,” she said. She buttoned herself back up, and welcomed him in. “Please, come in and sit down.”

Clayton nodded, perched himself on the edge of the sofa. Jessica sat down next to him.

“So what can  I do for you, Doc?” she asked him.

Clayton studied her face before continuing. “Captain …”

Jessica looked at him with a frown. “What is it? Something serious?”

Clayton looked up, as if the words were on the ceiling waiting for him to pull them down like errant balloons. “What I’m going to say won’t be easy.”

“Doc, what is it?” she asked.

Clayton reached out and took her hands in his. They were old, but warm and smooth. Well cared-for hands of a man who relied on them to save people’s lives.

“Jessica, some months ago I had a visit from Captain Singh. He was concerned by a sudden numbness in his legs. He asked me to check it out,” Clayton said.

“Oh?” King said, taken aback. “He didn’t say anything to me about it.”

“Well, he wanted it kept private. I was the only person he could tell because I’m ethically unable to say anything and he knew his secret would be safe with me. Normally this code of conduct would extend to the patient even when they’re deceased … but in this case I’m making an exception.”

King urged him on.

“The numbness was only slight, but it was noticeable. Bothered him enough to have me check it out. We ran some tests …” Clayton said.

He looked down at their hands.

“What were the results, Doctor? Don’t close up on me now. You’ve started this.”

Clayton’s eyes met with hers.

“The tests revealed the early stages of Multiple Sclerosis. MS. One of the few ailments of the human body we do not have a cure for,” he said.

Jessica was stunned. Singh hadn’t said anything to her.

“My God … how did he take it?”

Clayton shook his head. “Well enough, I suppose. We agreed there was no reason to tell anyone until it became more pronounced. And as I told him, that could take months or even years. There was time. But there was something else …”

“Yes?” Jessica asked. She felt saddened by what Clayton had revealed to her. That Andrew had never revealed his illness to her broke her heart in a way that losing him altogether hadn’t. A new pain. She couldn’t imagine how he’d felt, alone in the knowledge of his own limits.

“I told the Captain that it was hereditary. But I said ‘You don’t have any children, so that won’t be a problem will it?’ to which he said ‘That’s what I wanted to ask you about.’”

Jessica searched Clayton’s face for what was to come next. For the truth that lurked behind his sad eyes.

“He told me he had a daughter. But it was a secret. She didn’t know. He asked me to run a check on her, see if she might be susceptible to contracting the disease at some stage. I told him I needed a name,” Clayton said. He squeezed her hands. “He told me it was you, Jessica. You were his daughter.”

She looked away, suddenly unable to process what he was telling her.

W
e
can be your family …

I don’t have what it takes …

With my help you will have. If you’ll trust me …

Now she understood. He wasn’t trying to be her Father - he was her Father. And that was why it had pained him so to see her careening off into chaos. That was why he’d pulled her back. Her own singularity, making sure she didn’t stray too far so that he could keep a close and careful watch on her.

My Dad …

Clayton patted her hand. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t say. He made me swear not to tell you.”

Jessica looked at him. “Doc, did you -” she started to ask, but then the loud scream of the emergency klaxons filled her quarters, followed by a panicked announcement from the bridge.

“Captain! Red alert! Enemy vessel off the port bow and closing fast!”

Everything else fell aside. King got up and dashed for the door. Within seconds she was running down the corridor, headed straight for the bridge.

14.

“Report!” Captain King ordered as she strode onto the bridge.

On the viewscreen the image showed the swirling maelstrom of the nebula, and coming up on their left the huge bulk of the
Inflictor.

“We are at red alert, hull plating polarised,” Change reported.

“Very good,” King said. “Boi, open a channel. Try to hail them.”

She sat down and strapped herself in. There was the sound of boots on deck plating, and she turned her head in time to see Commander Greene walk onto the bridge followed closely by Gerard Nowlan.

Before she could say anything, Boi reported that a connection had been made.

“Put it up, Ensign,” she said.

The front viewscreen changed to a familiar face. Prince Sepix.

“We meet again,” Sepix said with obvious relish. He looked dishevelled but very much alive.

“Your highness. What a pleasure. I thought you were dead,” King said.

“Reports of my demise were greatly exaggerated, to say the least,” Sepix said.

“I can see that,” King said. “Although the ship looks a little different this time around …”

Sepix made a show of looking around. “She is a little worse for wear following our previous encounter, Captain. But otherwise none the weaker. And now, allow me to introduce a long-lost hero of the Dominion. You may know him from your history books!”

He stepped to the side to allow the newcomer to the conversation. The sleek form appeared beside him, his face nothing but a curve of mirrored armour. Of course Jessica remembered who this figure was. The most famous adversary of the Union and a renowned warlord of the Draxx Dominion. No-one had ever seen the face behind that mirror mask.

Jessica heard Nowlan gasp next to her at the sight of him.

“General Carn,” Sepix said with a smile.

The General nodded slowly. “Deactivate your defences. You are now the prisoners of the Draxx Dominion. Prepare to be boarded. Failure to comply would be futile.”

The line was cut. The viewscreen changed back to show the enemy vessel.

King looked from Captain Nowlan to Commander Greene.

“What do we do?” Greene asked. “We’ve only just got this tub back together.”

Jessica nodded. Her jaw tightened.

“What choice do we have?” she said. She stood up, resolute. “All hands …
battle stations!
”

PART THREE

HERO

1.

General Carn targeted the group of craft in his scanners and sent his orders through the stealth communication circuits. The two ships following his lead acknowledged with similarly silent signals.

He increased his speed. Once he closed the distance to the enemy, he would spring the trap.

So, their intel had been correct after all: a Union task force led by Captain Gerard “Hawk” Nowlan was systematically destroying their replicant production facilities, a strategy he respected if not appreciated.

But he couldn’t allow that to happen. They’d lost too many foot soldiers to unending battlefields like Massa E Kym. There was no way they could afford to lose the ability to quickly produce more. A ready-made battle force of unthinkable possibilities was an extremely valuable asset.

He locked onto the craft at the rear of the group as he came up behind it, and signalled his own ships to fan out. Under no circumstances were they to open fire until he’d already done so.

The General considered himself a true man of war; though
man
was the loosest possible term. In another life he’d once been like a man, it was true. But like the blacksmiths of a bygone age, he’d been reforged by the fires of chaos into something new entirely; a deadly weapon, tempered for war.

And now, like an arrowhead formed from molten steel, he was headed for his target. Carn’s hand braced against the firing trigger.
Wait … wait … wait …

He fired.

Red energy bolts tore free from the front of his fighter. His stream of fire struck the back of the small Union craft. “Yes …” he whispered with pleasure as it exploded.

Now the two Draxx ships would perform a pincer movement to pick the other ships off. However, unlike the custom design of his own ship, fitted with the latest in stealth camouflage technology, the other two could not fire while cloaked. Their energy banks could not handle the vast amount of energy required for both acts, leaving them open to attack.

He watched from the side of his cockpit as the lead Union ship climbed away. The little ship spun on its axis. As it came up behind the Draxx vessel it let loose the cannons at its front, firing in rapid succession.

The Draxx ship was no more.

Carn brought himself to a standstill, to see what would happen next. However he hadn’t counted on two things. The first was that the stealth technology was not entirely without flaws. It reflected a fraction of the ambient starlight. Perhaps not noticeable to the average observer. But at the right angle …

The second was that his enemy would have the eyes of his namesake. And those hawk-like eyes spotted the subtle shift in light as Carn’s ship drifted on the currents of space.

Hawk’s fighter swung to the right. Then, without warning, it fired on him. The powerful bolts struck him dead on.

Circuits blew as the cloak failed. Carn ignored it. He threw the ship into overdrive and rocketed forward. Immediately he fired two warheads at Hawk’s ship. Hawk ducked out of their way, and they went hurtling through the pocket of space he’d occupied a second before.

Carn hurled his ship into a seemingly impossible barrel roll that evaded every one of the bolts Hawk fired his way. The swift response of his limbs was unnatural in its cool fluidity.

The other Union ship took out his last wing mate, burst the ship like a metal balloon.

That’s enough. Time to leave.

As Carn turned, he unleashed a single warhead on the small Union ship. It didn’t have time to react, and its radio chatter over his comm. system was immediately silenced.

He sped away. Immediately Hawk tried to close the gap.

Carn hailed the pursuing vessel through the comm. He didn’t need to identify himself. As the saying went, they were
well met.

“
General,
” Hawk said.

“How did you know?” Carn said with mock innocence in his trademark silvery voice.

“
It looked like your type of ship, to be honest,
” Hawk said.

Carn chuckled. The last time he’d had cause to laugh was when he had Hawk on a slab torturing him, back on Mephisto Mara. But that was months ago. Nowlan had obviously regained his strength and confidence since then. Of course, the purpose of the torture had not been to kill him. That would have been swift and clean.

Uninteresting.

The key had been to find his weakness, find his pain threshold and slowly break through it. Tease it open wide enough to exploit it. If that Union rescue force hadn’t arrived to free him, the General might have succeeded in finally breaking him in two …

“Well, I have to say, your own ship suits you the best,” Carn said.

“Oh yeah? And how’s that?”

Carn checked his readout. “It’s small.”

Hawk fired a warhead. It fell short of Carn’s ship, although the explosion behind rocked the Draxx vessel from side to side.

“I’d have thought you’d know better than to waste your precious ammunition,” Carn said.

“Just a taster for you, General. Now how’s about we stop this charade and get you under arrest,”
Hawk said.

Again, Carn laughed. He keyed several controls. There was no time to plot an exact course. If he waited any longer, he knew Hawk would close the distance between them and blow him out of the sky. What Hawk had probably guessed was that in disabling the stealth systems of the enemy ship, the battle had also damaged the ship’s energy shielding. Carn was a sitting target without it.

Well, not for much longer.

“You are confident, human. I’ll give you that. Anyway, it’s been pleasant enough but I grow
tired
of your company.”

General Carn pushed the Jump Drive lever forward. The stars burst forth around him and he was gone.

* * *

He exited in the path of a black hole. With the immense speed of his mighty ship, Carn failed to brake in time to slow down. He tore straight toward the eye of the swirling singularity. There was no wait. No slow tumble into the prospect of nothingness at its centre.

If the General believed in a God, he’d have sworn by one as his ship got sucked in like flotsam down a plughole. There was no panic. No fear. The methods taught to him so long ago to control his emotions kicked in again.

He was still. At peace.

The edges of the black hole slipped past, and he descended into the eye.

Into the void.

He expected the crush of unthinkable forces, but it didn’t come. Instead he found his mind opened like a flower, and every thought he’d ever had was released like dandelion seeds on a breeze.

He wandered.

Worlds and systems he’d seen. The star he’d called Sun in another life. A planet, small and covered in water. Blue skies. Dusk and dawn through blankets of cloud.

He remembered what it was like to have hands - real ones. And to touch with them. To really
feel
, with natural, biological skin.