The Awakening (The Hyperscape Project Book 1) (26 page)

For a brief
moment, the methane blast disrupted the firefight.  Through the haze, Arya
could see the enemy trying to regroup.  Her heart sank.  It didn’t
look like the crew was going to win this one. After all they’d been through a
band of lousy pirates was going to take them out.

Clink.
The sound had Arya’s ears twisting to locate the origin.  She looked down
at the floor. An orb about the size of a gorsh fruit bounced into the center of
the defending crewmembers. Her brain screamed for her to run, but it was too
late. Bolts of energy shot out from the device and hit her in the chest. She
hung there, unable to move, every nerve in her body screaming out in intense
pain. Her eyes were locked in a stare across the bay. She watched as her crew
just stopped, paralyzed in their last positions by fluctuating beams of energy
projecting outward from the orb. Then she felt her consciousness begin to fade,
and it was over. The team that had fought valiantly against so many enemies
collapsed to the floor.

Arya awoke to
the sound of the lead raider’s voice. Her body hurt right down to her bones.
She forced her eyes open then shut them again. They hurt too. When she tried to
move, it was obvious she lacked all muscular control. Apparently, she was
sitting on the floor, propped up against one of the crates, her hands bound
behind her back. She forced one eye open enough to see two hazy figures
standing nearby. Suddenly, an out of focus face leaned in. She jerked back only
to fall over helplessly to the floor. She felt a rough hand on her shoulder,
and then a sharp sting pricked her neck.

“That should
bring her around, Cap.”

Slowly, Arya’s
eyes focused on the figure before her. From her uncomfortable vantage point on
the ground, she could easily see it was the commander of the raiders.

“Captain Binche,
I believe.” The Commander said sarcastically. “At last we meet.” He gave a
raspy chuckle, and a few of his soldiers followed suit.

Arya pushed the
words out of her unusually dry throat “Commander Patuke, I assure you the
pleasure is all yours.” Arya knew she was only alive for one reason. They must
have discovered that the module wasn’t aboard the Ashok, and they wanted her to
tell them where it was. “Filthy pirate,” she sneered.

“Pirates,
raiders, those are such ugly terms. We prefer
procurers of unclaimed
merchandise.”

“Unclaimed? Somehow,
I doubt that!”

The Commander
leaned down, grabbed her by the collar and pulled her upright.

The bindings
around Arya’s wrists dug into her soft skin, making her wince. “Ow,” she
protested. The head raider pushed his face in close to Arya. His need of a bath
was now painfully obvious to her sensitive nose.

“Well, if
everyone’s dead, then there ain’t no one to claim anything, now is there? And
the name’s Zurkan,” he said with a sinister grin.

Arya tried not
to vomit at the smell of his breath. The wooziness in her head didn’t help
matters. She tightened her throat, determined to hold her bile down. What the
hetek was that weapon they had used on her? She had never seen anything like
it. Or felt anything like it. She felt like she had been beaten by ten
bat-wielding Rakozians. It even hurt to blink.

Arya glanced at
her hip. Her PDU was gone!
Had they taken it?  Where was it?

“Frek,” she
mumbled. She glanced around at the raiders. There was no indication that any of
them had her PDU.

“Now where is my
little buddy Arnon?” Zurkan asked her.

“He’s dead,” she
told him with satisfaction. “Killed by an energy creature. It sucked the life
right out of him.”

“You mean a
Glop?” Zurkan grinned. “What a shame. Well, that means my cut of the profit
just got bigger.” He glanced nervously over his shoulder. “What happened to the
Glop? It’s not still on board, is it?”

“I wouldn’t tell
you if it was. Besides, all your men roaming around will just improve my odds.
Big strapping guys like you would make a good meal for a Glop, don’t you
think?”

Arya smirked up
at the commander. She could tell Zurkan’s composure was slipping, though he
tried to hide it.

As she gazed up
at the idiot, she suddenly realized that she’d left her PDU in the storage
locker.  In her mind, she carefully retraced her steps up to the time they
had engaged the raiders. She recalled having checked the ship’s systems from
the PDU when she’d been in the storage area picking up extra ammo.
Frek!
She remembered now that she had set the device down on the shelf when a noise
had startled her. She mentally cursed herself for being so careless. 
 

“So where has
that famous hyperspace module gone? Hmm…where?” the Commander coaxed. He
reached down, grabbed Arya’s silken, green hair and pulled her to her feet. “The
last transmission said it was in Bay Two. Where has it gone? And the pilot, the
human, where is he?”

Arya stared
directly into his beady little pirate eyes. Zurkan was definitely starting to
lose his cool. That made him even more unpredictable and dangerous. At the
moment, he had the upper hand. She was in pain, and she was having difficulty
coming up with a good stall tactic.  She fumbled for a good way to answer
him about the module. If she told him that Nick was most likely dead, he’d
probably shoot them all right there.

A series of
beeps sprang from Arya’s com-badge. The Commander glanced down at her badge.
“What the frek is that?”

Glad to have an
opportunity to change the subject, Arya quickly answered. “The com-link is
freked. You blasted the sket out of it with your ships.”

Arya’s badge
continued to squawk out short and long beeps. At first she had assumed that the
com-link really was freked, but then she realized there was a pattern in the
beeps.  The noises sounded like an ancient human code Nick had told her
about. But who would be using it?

Trying to
distract the commander from coming to a similar realization, she asked,
“Speaking of procuring technology…what was that weapon you used to paralyze all
of us?  Pretty impressive.  I might know some people who would pay
handsomely for that kind of unit.”

Zurkan smiled.
“That was a lightning grenade. Leftovers from the Klagonian war. Hard to find
these days. But you’re avoiding the subject. Where is the module?”

On the bridge,
Sirok was also listening to the beeps over the com-channel. He displayed the
incoming pulses on his screen. The pattern was familiar somehow. The database
didn’t have a match for it, but he knew he had seen it before. The image of a
piece of paper in Nick’s quarters flitted through his mind. That’s where he’d
seen these pulses before. A series of short and long dashes scribbled on a pad
in Nick’s quarters. But what did it mean?

He quickly set
about having the computer analyze the pattern, cross checking with the human
language files gathered from Nick’s nanites. A translation slowly fell into
place on the screen before him. ‘Slimy, I need you to do the following.’

Slimy?
Only one person called him that.

Nick Bannon.

But where was
he?

Down in the bay,
Arya didn’t know how long she could stall before Zurkan would start killing
members of the crew. She desperately needed to give him an answer. “Fine, you
baskurt!”  Arya let out a sob, pretending that it was difficult for her to
betray her friend.  “The moon on the far side of this planet. He went
there.” She hung her head and continued to make a show of sobbing.

Commander Zurkan
glanced at one of his men. “Get back to the ship. Tell them to head—”

A voice from the
Commander’s com-link interrupted his sentence. “Commander! The module, it’s—”

The transmission
went dead. “Stuke…Stuke, are you there? Stuke?”

Arya looked up
at the Commander.  He actually seemed concerned, even rattled.

A voice answered
over the com-link. “Stuke’s dead and you’re next, asshole.”

Zurkan turned to
Arya, rage building on his face. His jaw quivered, his eye’s flared. “That
baskurt killed Stuke!” He grabbed the hair on the back of Arya’s head and
forced a pistol under her chin. “Tell him to surrender now or I start killing
the crew. Beginning with you!”

Arya had
difficulty even focusing on Zurkan.  At the moment her mind had seized on
that voice coming over the com-badge, and a whole host of emotions were pouring
through her.  Elation, worry, doubt, concern, joy.  That was Nick’s
voice! He was alive! She frowned, her happiness quelled by the fact that she
would probably soon be dead at the hands of a lunatic pirate.

“Tell him, now!”
Zurkan demanded, kicking her shin with one pointed boot.

Arya let out a
wail and nearly collapsed from the searing pain shooting throughout her nervous
system.  She was only held upright by Zurkan’s tight grip on her hair.

“Alright!” she
screamed, as hairs were ripped from her scalp by the Commander’s tight grip.
Schooling herself, she spoke calmly into the com-link on the Commander’s wrist.
“Nick. He said he would start killing the crew, starting with me. Nick…don’t
surrender! Sirok, PDU!”

Zurkan abruptly
stopped her words with a solid blow from his pistol grip. Sparks of pain shot
through her skull and then she fell unconscious to the floor, blood oozing from
the wound on her right temple.

He glared at her
prone body. “Binche. I knew I couldn’t trust her.”

He raised the
wrist-mounted com-link to his mouth. “Listen, human. I am only going to say
this once. Surrender now and I will spare the crew. Waste any more of my time,
and I will kill them, one by one, until you bring me that ship.”

Nick’s voice
crackled through the com-link. “I have no love of the Ashok or its crew. As far
as I’m concerned, there’s nothing stopping me from finishing you off right
now.”

“You’re not
fooling me for a minute, human. You’ve gone to great lengths to protect this
ship and crew.” Zurkan raised his pistol and pulled the trigger. A body fell
limp to the floor. “That’s one. How many more will it take?”

Nick sat quietly
in his module. The com-channel had been open when Zurkan pulled the trigger.
He’d heard the blast and the body hitting the deck. His heart quivered at the
thought of that body being Arya. Zurkan said he would start with her, so Nick could
only assume….

Arya! The
bastard had killed Arya!

A primal roar
erupted from Nick’s throat, and he punched the nearest panel.  His entire
body shook with rage and pain. 

“You bastard!”
he shrieked long and loud into the cold emptiness of space. “You bastard,” he
ended on a whimper.

Tears ran down
his face as he tried to compose himself.  He couldn’t let this turd know
how much he cared.  He had to maintain the façade of indifference.

“Commander
Prik!” he said into the com-badge. “This is Nick Bannon! You win. I surrender.
I am setting an approach vector. The module is yours…under one condition. 
You have to give me your word that you won’t hurt anyone else.”

“Agreed. But
don’t take too long. I’ve always wondered how tough the skin of a Rakozian actually
is, and I’m not known for my patience.” The Commander grinned at Karg, who was
just beginning to rouse.

Zurkan turned
and stared through the force-field into space. The muted shape of the module
soon came into view. The docking arm cradled the module and drew it closer.
Slowly, the craft made its way through the protective field and came to rest in
front of him. His goons quickly surrounded the module, their weapons primed and
ready.

“Get out,
human!” Zurkan commanded, raising his pistol.

The canopy of
the module stayed locked in place.

“Come out where
I can see you, human.”

Still, no
movement came from the craft.

Zurkan waved to
one of the raiders. “Open it!”

The raider
stepped over and pulled the outside latch. A slight hiss escaped as the canopy
began to open. The cover hinged upward, revealing an empty cockpit.

Zurkan rushed to
the side of the module and looked inside. “Empty!” he growled in anger.

A subdued laugh
sprang from Karg’s lips. He knew Nick had a plan. He always did. Karg only
hoped it was one that would actually work.

Zurkan’s
breathing deepened as his anger rose. Not only was the human not in the
cockpit, but a vital piece of equipment was missing from the instrument panel
of the module! He stared at the numerous wires dangling out of a rectangular
hole in the dash where the component had once been housed. Zurkan’s patience
was at an end. He was preparing to slaughter the entire crew when he noticed
the note pinned to the harness in the cockpit.
‘I have the key component of
the module. If you harm anyone else, I’ll destroy it.’

Zurkan’s blood
boiled. He stood leaned over the module, his heart ready to burst through his
chest he was so angry.
This freking human was making a fool of him!

His movements
were jerky as he turned to some nearby soldiers. “Find that human and bring him
to me!” he snarled.

The two raiders
stared at their commander, puzzled.

“You idiots!
He’s somewhere in the freking ship! Go check the other hangar bay!” Zurkan
demanded.

The two bumped
into each other as they hastily turned to leave.

“It’s so hard to
get good help these days,” Zurkan mumbled as the two made their way out of the
bay.

As the two
raiders rounded a corner in the corridor, one stopped abruptly, causing the
second one to collide into the back of him. “Did you see that?”

“I didn’t see
nothin’ but my nose being mashed into the back of your head.” Rubbing the blood
back into his face, the raider peered down the corridor, trying to figure out
what his friend was talking about.