The Vanity of Hope Read online

  “Exactly what model is it?” Rulg asked.

  “You wouldn’t have come across one of these before. It’s a Vipr.” He clicked his fingers and the stealthFighter reappeared.

  “Doesn’t look like one to me.”

  “You’re thinking of the Viper combat model, which takes the direct route through whoever’s in its path—much the same as your limited style. This model is designed to go around, manipulate, and get inside before it kills. Not as robust as a Viper, but ultimately more dangerous.”

  “It’s inside—right where the Federation wants it.”

  Jbir nibbled his bottom lip, remembering how the Vipr had looked him squarely in the eyes on their first encounter and firmly shaken his hand. At the time, he thought its exacting behavior was a sign of loyal obedience. Just how far did its mimicry powers extend?

  “The Vipr is insurance. Iris will go to sleep if I die, therefore, the Vipr will logically do everything it can to protect me, including the processing of any threats to my health, which is where you come in.”

  Rulg lunged forward and stabbed at the Vipr’s elongated neck. A steel-hard grip bent his hand back until his wrist snapped and a lightning-fast kick cracked his chest armor.

  Rulg’s eyes dimmed. “He’ll kill every one of you,” he screamed. “I’m your only chance.”

  The Vipr backhanded Rulg across the face.

  Kuilp, Nukal, and Strapi turned to Jbir.

  Jbir roared with laughter and the trinkets rattled on his coat. “Never trust a pirate.”

  Rulg dropped onto one knee and spat a broken fang on the floor. “Is that all you’ve got?” he said, spraying blood between his teeth. The Vipr crunched him in a front-on tackle and hauled him from the floor then slammed him over the back of a chair. Rulg staggered sideways and fell onto the navigation console.

  “Do as I say,” Jbir scowled to the others in the room, “or you don’t make it back alive.”

  “Warning,” Iris said, changing to bright red and growing to double the size. “Scanning signal detected. Warning! Scanning signal detected.”

  “What is it?” Jbir said, getting up from the command chair.

  Science Officer Nukal shoved Rulg aside and took command of the console. “Boosting scan resolution,” he said, muting the alarm and keying in new search algorithms. “Images coming through.” He turned to Jbir. “Three Federation Fighters,” he announced in a thin, wavering voice as the Fighter profiles appeared in the lightMatrix hologram. “They’ve locked onto us, captain.”

  “Engage the repulsion shield.” Jbir shook his head in disbelief. Fighters were strictly short-range. They had to belong to a Scout ship. What were the Federation doing out here in uncharted star systems? Run, or deceive? Rulg’s modifications on Tilas made StarTripper extra fast and stealthy, but even at full health they’d never outrun Fighters, and crippled, they’d be lucky to out-maneuver a fully loaded Gukrein ore transporter. He padded from side to side on his sore feet and eased back into the chair. The Federation would be extra curious about his alien cargo. There was a chance of negotiating a trade with enough treasure left over to still make the journey worthwhile. The previous sixteen hundred years of space travel, including Earth, was a big deal. If he couldn’t secure a safe outcome, then he’d detonate the ship and take every secret with him. And hope his failSafe remained intact on Heyre.

  “The Fighters have initiated a tri-directional, deep-penetration scan,” Iris informed him.

  The minutes ticked away and he grew more confident. Hopefully, if the Indigo shielding did its job, he’d get lucky and beat the odds.

  A sharp peep announced an incoming request.

  “This is Captain Tretler of the Federation scout ship, Defiant 701,” she said in a composed voice.

  Jbir cringed. ‘Seven’ was an entirely new class of scout ship. To be out here so far from home it had to be one of the first ships to come out of the restricted war territories on the far side of Heyre. Patrolling out here without a support flotilla, Defiant would possess the latest defense-offense capabilities and be armed with lightSpears as well as conventional nuclear weapons. There would be hundreds of Angel fighters in the lower decks—not the recon ones he was dealing with now, but the smaller, more agile fighters they used for close-in ship to ship warfare, or for taking out heavily fortified ground bases. He scratched his beard. How long had they been tracking them? Defiant was a self-sufficient hunter-killer battle station on a classified mission. The Federation liked their secrets, but they liked keeping them even more.

  “Please identify yourself and state your reasons for being in this sector.”

  “I’m Captain Jbir, commander of the deep-space probe, StarTripper. We have completed a planetary reconnaissance on behalf of the Federation and are returning to Heyre with good news.” How direct should he be? “My orders are to report only to the Base on Heyre.”

  “Show me those orders.”

  “Send the encrypted orders,” he said to Nukal, and silently signaled to ask if they had a fix on the source.

  Nukal drew a circle in his palm and pointed to the star in the top left of the hologram. He tagged the star and ran a filtering algorithm over the haze.

  Jbir drummed his fingers on the armrest. There was too much background interference to see anything, even if the ship wasn’t cloaked. Standard Federation warfare tactics. Which way would she twitch?

  “Your orders appear genuine, but Captain Jbir, if you were sent on a mission to locate new planets, then the Federation would have issued you with an Orb to store any information the 4i forensic teams collected. You don’t appear to have one.”

  “We were only to get positional, biochemical, and geophysical data.”

  “You’re lying, captain. Heyre would only have put a Vipr on board for one reason. To stand guard. And I don’t mean for you,” she added, staring at Rulg’s broken body.

  “Your scanners have found everything we have.”

  “We can break the Vipr’s security codes and get the answers—directly, or otherwise.”

  “It’s important for us to personally report our findings,” he said.

  “You’re hiding something, Jbir. We’re coming aboard.”

  “There’s no need to. You’ve seen everything we have.”

  “Turn off your repulsion shield, now, or I will entrap your ship and board anyway.”

  The communication link peeped closed.

  He gave a nervous smile. They hadn’t located the bioPods, or the main Orb. So far so good. He was a long way from getting out of this mess, but at least he was still in the game. “Nukal, turn off the repulsion shield.”

  Rulg raised himself onto his good side and stared at his twitching tail. “It’s followed us,” he stammered.

  He’d forgotten about Rulg in the excitement and assumed he’d done them a favor and expired. Better get rid of him before the Federation came: they might try to repair him.

  “Can’t you hear it?” Rulg shouted, wiping blood from his ear. “Listen!”

  His eyebrows narrowed. He’d never heard Rulg this frantic before. The alarm in his voice bordered on fear. He turned to the door and strained his less sensitive ears. A tapping sound came from the other side of the bridge doors. One tap, then two, one, two—the way a polite visitor might knock to announce their arrival.

  He walked towards the weapons locker as the rhythm continued.

  “What about us?” Strapi asked. “We’ll need guns, as well.”

  Jbir grabbed two full ammo clips for his belt and rammed a third clip into the second magazine in the handgrip. “No, you don’t,” he said, cocking the hammer and gesturing with the barrel for Strapi to move away. “I don’t trust any of you scum. I’ll handle this.”

  The tapping quickened and the Vipr armored up with layers of overlapping scales on its forearms and chest then vanished into a higher frequency.

  “Iris, let the Vipr outside.”

  Rulg reached out with blood dripping from his crushed fingers.
“Don’t open the doors!”

  He shot Rulg in the leg. “Open the doors and get this over with.”

  The main doors opened and the Vipr stepped outside. A loud crunching sound came from the corridor and the Vipr staggered back and bounced off the wall. It shook its head then maximized its armor settings, generating a thin fighting knife along each forearm and another layer of all-over, finer scales.

  A thin tail spiraled around its neck as it ran back into battle. The Vipr clawed at the tail with needle-sharp fingers, ripping off chunks as the tail spun ever tighter. The tail lifted the Vipr to the roof then smashed it into the floor so hard a panel popped loose.

  Jbir snapped out of his disbelief. “Seal the doors,” he yelled and fired into the open doorway.

  Two clawed hands pushed the closing doors apart as Strapi raced Kuilp and Nukal to the locker.

  A creature that could have come from the Pits of Decay eased its way under the crossbeam and inside the bridge. Its bony, scaled head swayed on a slender neck and its triangular bottom jaw gaped open as though it struggled for air. Red, diagonal stripes ran along its ribs. A green, reptilian tongue slithered in and out between rows of razor-sharp, serrated teeth. The creature narrowed its stare on Jbir.

  The Vipr’s garroted head tumbled down the stairs and wobbled up to Jbir’s boots. He fell backward, firing as fast as he could squeeze the triggers. “Kill it,” he yelled, as the stare from the creature’s saucer-sized black eyes pulled him in. The Neonite bullets briefly penetrated the creature’s silky-smooth skin until a small flinch rejected the slugs onto the floor. The laser fire from Strapi, Kuilp, and Nukal dissipated across its seamless body like ink on blotting paper.

  “What in God’s name are you?” Jbir yelled, reloading a second clip.

  “Best match, a Négus,” Iris said. “Mythological creature. No verifiable sightings. Referenced under Superstition, the Rilla Order of monks, Tilas.”

  “It’s real, you stupid machine!”

  Kuilp held his short-range laser out in front and pulsed off a stream of blasts as he charged up the stairs. The creature twisted its hips and channeled energy to its uncoiling prehensile tail. The energy intensified as it narrowed down the whiplash and reached the tip at the exact moment it contacted Kuilp’s head, which exploded like an overripe melon.

  Rulg hobbled forward without a weapon. A long-range punch skewered him clean through. The small amount of blood that remained in his body flowed from the side of his mouth and his snake eyes lolled around in their sockets as the Négus lifted him aloft. “See you soon, Jbir,” he said in farewell.

  The creature tossed his punctured body through the lightMatrix of the arriving Federation Meds. He hit the console with a dull thud, fell to the floor, and twitched still.

  A single bite severed Nukal in half and a brutal side-kick smashed Strapi down the length of the bridge.

  Jbir backed up against the wall and placed the gun barrel against his temple. “That’s far enough. I pull this trigger and the ship goes with me.”

  The Négus stopped its advance and held him in an unbroken stare.

  Jbir struggled against the silly ideas rising inside in his head. He tightened his finger around the trigger and squeezed. He tried again, harder. All he had to do was curl his finger, a little more. He dropped the gun to his side. He should pick up the gun. He should fight to the death. He shouldn’t be helping. Must resist. Stupefied, he left the bridge, trapped within the prison of his mind, lost somewhere in the irrational wasteland between fever-mad delirium and a sweet, carefree dream where time ceased to matter, and the worries of the world drifted away over a becalmed, green ocean. The small boat he was in listed at the stern and kept sinking no matter how fast he bailed with his open hands. He scrambled his way to the front then grabbed onto the bowsprit as the boat sank beneath the surface. He was Captain Jbir. He was the greatest of all the pirates. He was… going to die.

  #

  “Do you think that’s what it is, sir—a Négus?” First Officer Longren asked.

  “I want maximum scan on the Négus,” Tretler said, as Jbir wandered, dazed, through the pirate ship followed by the Négus. He pressed his palm against the corridor wall and disappeared through an invisible doorway. “How the hell did he get his hands on Indigo-classified shielding?”

  “If it’s ours, then I can hack us through.”

  “Hurry, Longren. I need that hack, now.”

  “Almost there. We’re in.”

  A hologram of StarTripper’s medical bay appeared in the command center lightMatrix. The Négus lowered its head over the male in the bioPod secured in the right side of the bioJacket. It gave a hot snuff and a mist formed on the Tylinite cover then it raised its head.

  Tretler moved uncomfortably in her seat as the Négus stared directly at her on the bridge of Defiant, as though it knew their exact location—her location. She clenched her fists and held firm against the debilitating examination. A searing war cry overwhelmed the ship’s scanning modulators, forcing the crew to cover their ears against the onslaught. A lightPad vibrated from a vacant console and clattered onto the floor.

  “Vaporize the ship,” Tretler ordered. “Whoever, or whatever is in those bioPods isn’t worth that much trouble.”

  The Fighters locked their weapons onto StarTripper and fired. Three short-range lightArrows exploded in an axis of blinding light.

  “And that’s that,” Longren said.

  Tretler shook her head in disbelief. “There’s no wreckage. We hit nothing. Replay the impact. A hundredth speed.”

  The pirate ship disappeared into space the moment before the lightArrows intersected.

  She rubbed her tight forehead. She couldn’t break mission protocol and report the incident when there was no rational, scientific explanation for the disappearance of the pirate ship. Was it really a Négus, the mythical harbinger of dreadful days? She couldn’t report a myth. Jbir was a liar, but the Indigo scan proved that the two aliens in the bioPods were organically true. Somewhere out there was a planet with a biosphere that supported intelligent life—the rarest and most highly valued class of planet.

  “Longren,” she said, with steely resolve. “Set us on a course along StarTripper’s flight path. Full speed ahead. We have a planet to find.”

  Chapter 5

  Space-time unfolded and bound StarTripper to this realm.

  Jbir scrambled to catch the side of the operating table and steadied himself. He shook his head as he looked around the medical bay. The Négus was gone and the bioPods were intact inside the bioJacket. It couldn’t have all been a dream, but… everything seemed normal. He patted down his coat, reassured by the familiar jingle of his trinkets, and burst into laughter.

  He hobbled up to the bridge, nervously chuckling to himself and careful not to overload his weak legs. Were the Federation also gone? The bridge doors were open… and there were the laser-fire scorch marks across the wall. He turned to the mutilated bodies of his crew scattered around the bridge. Was it all his—the treasure, and the glory?

  He eased into the command chair and keyed in an outside view—just to make sure it was just him left.

  “It can’t be,” he said, braving another look at the lightMatrix. A wave of vertigo swept over him and his stomach churned. The dream was over, and the nightmare was real. Somehow he’d traveled across seven hundred and eighty-four light-years of space in the blink of an eye.

  “Is it true, Iris?” he asked, no longer able to discern the truth.

  She came to his side. “All dataPoints confirm the planet is Gukre.”

  Impossible, yet there she was—pitch dark, except for the nearside moonlight. The right thing to do was to slingshot from Gukre and head for Heyre to negotiate the best price for his riches, but something nagged at the periphery of his mind. Reasoning that he couldn’t quite grasp, said to stay the course and locate a safe place to hide.

  His head rocked between the euphoria of being almost home and the dread of having finally
lost his mind. Try as he might, he couldn’t find the lie. If this was a dream that he couldn’t wake up from and was in every way the same as the inner world he had considered ‘reality’, then he was either sane and that was Gukre or he was irreparably psychotic. To hell with it. No point in over-thinking the impossibility of the world below.

  From past experience, the quicker he got down, the more time he’d have to escape the authorities. He ran his hands down his cheeks and blew out a heavy sigh. It was almost two thousand years since he’d left Gukre for the final time, vowing to never return, yet here he was again with another cargo of a ‘delicate nature.’

  “Iris, maximum cloaking. We’re going in.”

  The reckless descent through the dense atmosphere deepened as he raced StarTripper ahead of the approaching dawn.

  “Captain, the hull is…” Iris said.

  “I know,” he said, keeping a wary eye on the hull brightening to yellow hot in the ‘Structural Integrity’ sphere rotating inside the ship’s lightMatrix. “Leave it to me.”

  StarTripper broke through the clouds. It was suicide coming here. Great deeds lay ahead. He’d lose everything. His mind swung like a pendulum between the only sane option to turn around and set course for Heyre, and the need to stay the course. He didn’t know why, but fame and fortune lay just ahead. He engaged manual override and hit full reverse thrust to put the ship into a final, spiral drop.

  “Captain Jbir, are you sure this is what you want to do?”

  He stared across the Great Swamp and braced for impact. “They’ll never find us here. Blast shields up.”

  Swamp sludge hissed and bubbled against StarTripper’s searing hull as she bumped and skipped across the surface and lurched to a halt. Seething swamp pressed against the Tylinite windows and a heavy groan went through the ship.

  “It’s a death trap,” Iris said. “We can never leave.”

  Jbir furiously rubbed his face as he snapped awake at the insanity of what he’d done and smashed his fist on the chair’s sidearm. He descended from his throne and shuffled between his crew. How could his best-laid plans have been so easily undone? It wasn’t his fault. He kicked the Vipr’s head out of the way and stared at Rulg’s broken body.