She leaned over to the microphone. “Sean, I’m seriously considering surrendering.”
“What? No, Z. No, no, no.”
“We don’t have any other play, captain.”
“I’ll tell you what the play is. You take the Vostok down to Taullae or Ordilon. Someplace remote. You hide the cargo. Then you ditch the ship. Power everything down—”
Ana-Zhi interrupted him. “Sean, they’ll find us.”
“Not if you’re smart, Z.”
“What about you?” I asked.
“What do you mean, son?”
“We should be reviving your body right now.”
There was a long silence.
“Hey?” I asked. “You there?”
The Sean bot made a sound very much like a human sigh.
“Jannigan, don’t worry about me. I’m not important—”
“Bullshit.” My eyes began to cloud. “You’re totally important.”
“No I’m not. I’m mostly an Aanthangan bot. If something goes wrong, I’ll self-destruct. Otherwise I’ll go down with the ship.”
“No!”
Chiraine moved close and pulled me tight. “It’s okay.”
“Goodbye, Jannigan,” my father said. “You’re in charge now.” Then he cut off the comm.
I burst into the first crew cabin I could find and crashed down on the bunk. My head was spinning with thoughts and feelings, but I just pushed them away.
Focus. Calm.
I began breathing deeply and tried to control my thundering heart.
I didn’t want to see anyone or think about anything. I was still trying to process what was happening. Intellectually I knew that it was just a bot who had left me, but it felt like my real father leaving me. Again.
And it messed me up. Again.
At some point, my lack of sleep got the better of me and I must have dozed off into a deep dreamless sleep.
I don’t know how long I was asleep, but I was awoken by Chiraine.
“You have to see this,” she said, but wouldn’t explain further.
We returned to the bridge and Ana-Zhi told me to look at the scanner’s display.
I saw something large and very fast-moving on the screen, but my brain must have been still fogged with sleep because I couldn’t figure out what it was.
“An asteroid,” Chiraine announced.
“And a big one,” Ana-Zhi said. “At least two hundred fifty meters across. It came out of nowhere and it’s not on any of the historical scans.”
“The Kryrk…?” I couldn’t believe it actually worked. It was impossible.
“It looks that way,” Ana-Zhi said.
“And its course…?”
“Straight at Bandala. Impact in four hours and twenty-four minutes. But that’s not all.”
“What do you mean?”
Ana-Zhi flicked at the display, changing to a different screen. “That Mayir armada? They’re here. Looks like a long-range freighter with a squadron of fighter escorts. And a tug.”
Oh shit.
“What are we going to do?” Chiraine asked.
I looked over at Ana-Zhi, but she just shrugged and said, “You’re the captain, Jannigan.”
This wasn’t what I wanted, but I didn’t really have a choice.
“My father was right,” I said. “We need to get out of here. But we’re not going to Taullae.”
“Oh?” Ana-Zhi asked.
“We’re going back to Yueld.”
“Isn’t that the first place the Mayir will look for us?” Chiraine asked.
“Not where I’m thinking.”
“The Well of Forever?” Chiraine wrinkled her forehead.
“Yes.”
She smiled at me. “Brilliant!”
Ana-Zhi nodded. “Not if one of those K’Lortai Dragons decides to eat us.”
We set off at full speed towards Yueld, monitoring both the asteroid and the Mayir. It was just a matter of time before they tried to make contact with the Vostok, so Chiraine and I worked on disabling the comm unit. We wouldn’t be completely invisible, but it might buy us some time to get away and hide.
A half hour from Yueld, the scanners went crazy.
“What the hell is going on?”
The readout registered a massive surge of radiation about 200 kilometers from Bandala.
We all crowded around the display, trying to figure out what had happened.
Then I called up the projected course of the asteroid.
My god. The blast was right on the path of the asteroid. That could only mean one thing.
“Those fuckers blew up the asteroid.”
I fiddled with the ship’s cameras until I got a visual. And then we all saw it for ourselves: a globe of superheated debris exploding outwards.
“Shields up!” I yelled.
“I think we’re fine,” Ana-Zhi said, but she goosed the proximity plates anyway. “We’re pretty far away and not really in the path.”
Far away or not, the visual display flared orange and then burned white until the sensors compensated and grayed out the screen. The last image I saw was an exploding halo of particles and gas.
All the color had drained from Chiraine’s face. “We failed.”
“Not completely,” I said. “We still have a ship full of artifacts.”
“We need to get them away from here,” Ana-Zhi said.
“And back into the hands of someone responsible,” Chiraine said. “Maybe someone at Marlington.”
“Hey, princess, let’s not be too hasty. This cargo is worth more than I can imagine.”
“We can debate all of that later,” I said. “For now, let’s concentrate on getting back to Yueld.”
“Aye aye, captain.”
THE END
Free Prequel Story
What really happened to Sean Beck seven years ago…?
Find out in the FREE Star Rim Empire short story Marauders of Bandala.
Get your copy at:
https://www.randynargi.com/bandala/
The Well of ForeverSpecial Sneak Preview of the Next Star Rim Empire Novel
“Beware the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.”
Ben Okri
Without warning, the Vostok lurched hard, throwing the three of us off our feet. Then the ship twisted around and suddenly up was down and down was up.
It happened so fast that the inertial compensators and artificial gravity couldn’t react in time. Neither could the gyrostabilizers.
Chiraine Portelle screamed and Ana-Zhi Agrada bellowed. I was too shocked to make a sound. I was concentrating on not breaking my neck as I smacked into a ventilation pylon that used to run from the floor to the ceiling and was now coming diagonally at my head.
Urgent klaxons sounded and console’s displays flashed alert upon alert. The main viewport showed a creature so large that I could only see parts of it: a muscled appendage, rippling in the mist.
I knew what it was, of
