Chapter 29

The silence was deafening. Jackson’s death happened so fast that Lee didn’t have time to process it. This wasn’t the time or place either. He had to keep his wits and focus on getting to the Knight.

Lee looked at Xohn, who had been crouching and covering himself with his arms to avoid the shrapnel. “We gotta get over there now,” he spoke through his suit comms.

Xohn looked up at Lee. His eyes were wide, and his face was ashen. He was shaken from the explosion or the sudden loss of Jackson.

Lee took labored steps over to Xohn underneath the belly of the Nightcrawler. Xohn stood beside him, visibly shaking inside his suit. Lee fastened a short tether from his harness to a security loop on Xohn’s flight suit.

“You okay?”

“He’s just gone, Lee,” Xohn said with a distant stare.

“I know,” Lee said in a low voice. His mind struggled to process it. The cocky, young screw-up paid the ultimate price to save them. Lee was at a loss. There was an avalanche of conflicting emotions brewing underneath his calm exterior. Regret and sorrow crashed against gratitude and a surprising sense of respect. Jackson had lived up to his promise.

“We have to keep moving, or we will be too.” He tried to bury his feelings to refocus on their immediate survival needs.

Xohn suddenly began to panic.

He put his hands on both of Xohn’s shoulders and said, “It’s going to be alright; we’re in this together. I like it even less than you do, okay?”

Xohn nodded inside his helmet.

Lee turned around, facing the Knight, “Alright, Xohn, release your boots.”

“Got it,” Xohn said from behind him.

Lee crouched, aimed his grappling tether, and shot it at the Knight. After connecting on the lower side of the maintenance hatch, he tugged at it to ensure it was secure. His hand held the harness near the controls and hit the button to reel themselves across the line.

Once on the Knight, Lee looked back at Nightcrawler, pitted with damage. There was sad respect for the ship that had been his home for two decades. Perhaps they could come back and salvage it someday, but with comms out and silent running, she would be impossible to ever find again.

If his life had taught him anything lately, it was that he just needed to keep moving forward. To roll with whatever the galaxy threw at him and not let the past hold him captive.

Lee motioned for Xohn to lock his boots and follow him across the underbelly of the Knight to the lower access hatch. He hoped his bet paid off that the ship was in better, or at least repairable condition. More than that, he wanted to recall the escape pods to keep Draden from escaping.

It took Lee a minute to figure out the emergency access controls. Every ship had one—the Pilot’s Federation required it. But Falcon deLacy took a different approach to their control layout than the Lakon-style he knew. The hatch opened with amber warning lights flashing inside.

Lee stepped inside carefully, feeling the tug from Xohn behind him. After both of them were inside, he found the controls for the emergency atmosphere. The air rushed around them, and he spun back to disconnect himself from Xohn.

“Keep your RemLok on. We don’t know for sure what made them take the escape pods.”

Xohn nodded, still shaky. “Lee?”

“Yeah?”

“That was my first spacewalk.”

“Now you know why I don’t care for it.”

Xohn nodded furiously from in his helmet.

“Okay,” he smacked his hands together, looking over at the door to the rest of the ship. “Now, the real trick. The inner airlock door is secured from unauthorized entry. Think you can help me override it?”

“I will try,” Xohn tilted his head while looking at the controls.

They worked to pry the access panel off to let Xohn analyze the circuitry. Over the next ten minutes, he went from scratching his head to experimenting to mapping out the Falcon deLacy circuits. A few minutes later, after some trial and error, he had the door open.

“I can see why you like this hacking,” Xohn said offhand.

Lee nodded, then peaked his head through. The corridor was hazy with a residual smokey scent but otherwise empty. There wasn’t near the amount of internal wreckage as on the Nightcrawler. He guessed it was the difference of age between the ships. This was a much newer ship, with next to no metal fatigue.

The only sound was from gases hissing somewhere. The corridor lights flickered. They were having power problems here, too. But why abandon ship so quickly?

Lee took careful steps through the ship. As quiet as he tried to be, the locking and unlocking of his magboots echoed loudly in his ears. He approached a corridor intersection, taking a quick peek in both directions.

Empty.

There was something, though—a noise. Lee turned his suit amplifier up and strained to make out what it was. Breathing? Yes, it was a slow, distant huffing, with a soft murmuring of someone’s voice.

Lee signaled Xohn to move with him. Together, they continued forward toward the bow of the ship. Loud footfalls followed them, echoing through the corridors. Lee had to readjust his amplifier to keep their footsteps from deafening him.

Along the corridor were two doors—one shut, one open. Light with a violet hue poured into the passage from inside the room. He motioned to Xohn toward the door and pressed himself against the wall beside the opening. Peering in carefully, he found empty first-class quarters. Lee adjusted his suit’s sound sensitivity. The breathing was coming from inside, somewhere.

He entered the room, looking out for any sign of movement. The first class quarters were elaborate. It had a large open space to relax, with a private galley. The decor had an almost Imperial flair. A beautifully decorated sword was mounted on a tabletop before the virtual environment screens. A serene rolling pasture of tall blue grass-like plants with otherworldly purple skies flickered on the displays.

A sudden loud sound startled him, forcing him to turn down the sensitivity of his suit’s amplifier. It came from the direction of the bedroom. It was a vacuum sound of some sort. It appeared most likely to be coming from the adjoining bathroom.

He looked over at Xohn to ensure he was still following and moved forward. Lights flickered in the bedroom, but the bathroom light was steady. Whoever it was in there couldn’t hear their footfalls from the noise of the shower vacuum.

Lee leaned around the bathroom wall into the doorway and saw a clothed figure crouched in the shower stall. They were furiously scrubbing and vacuuming themselves.

Lee spoke to get his attention, “Hello?” There was still no response; his voice seemed muffled in the helmet. But he dared not remove it without knowing if the air was somehow contaminated.

“Hello?” Lee said, louder this time.

The man shot up and turned around, his ponytail swinging in zero-G.

It was Sylus Draden himself.

The entire front of him was covered in blood. The left half of his pockmarked face was clean, blood staining the other. He squinted, trying to make out Lee’s face.

“Major?” He said, confused. He clambered out of the shower unit, still breathing heavily. “Major Tom? What are you doing here?”

Lee was shocked, angry, and confused. “Tom?” Then he remembered their last encounter. “Right. Consular Duryss, what happened here?”

“They… abandoned me, Major,” he cried with a whimper. “I– I tried to… but I couldn’t.” His eyes went distant.

“Tried to what?”

The blood-covered man was crouched over, holding his blood-soaked hands out. “They left me. Took the escape pods and left me…”

“Why didn’t you escape?”

“I tried,” he sobbed. Lee had a hard time telling if it was an act or genuine. “He fought me for the last pod, but I…” His voice trailed off.

“You what?”

He didn’t respond at first, then held his head down, staring at his hands. “I stopped him.”

“It’s okay. We’re going to be okay.” As much as Lee wanted to throttle him, survival was the priority. “Can you tell me why the crew abandoned the ship?”

“The attack,” his speech was still soft and stunned. “We were being attacked.”

“Okay, but what happened? Why did they need to escape?”

“The Imperial Cutter– Our engines were out. No shields, no weapons, no way to defend–”

“Alright, so no leaks or atmospheric contamination?”

Draden shook his head.

Convinced, Lee pushed the button to retract his RemLok helmet. He leaned back to look at Xohn and signaled him forward. “Alright, look, Master Xohn is here.” He turned around to face Draden. “He’s going to help clean you up. I’ll check the ship and see what we can get going again.” He stepped back to duck out of the bathroom past Xohn. As he passed, he leaned toward Xohn’s ears and, in a low voice, said, “Keep an eye on him for now. Bring him up to the flight deck when he’s cleaned up.”

Xohn nodded as he passed Lee into the bathroom.

Lee headed to the flight deck. Before the entrance, he found signs of a struggle. Along the bulkhead of the flight deck door were four escape pod racks. Three were missing, but the fourth was jammed. Outside the pod’s ajar door were the mangled remains of a man’s upper torso floating out of the partially sealed escape pod. Blood had sprayed out and covered the corridor.

The only way Lee could imagine something like that was for someone to activate the pod’s emergency seal while climbing in. Tried to stop them alright, Lee thought, disgusted.

The Knight’s flight deck was spacious compared to an Asp Explorer’s small tandem vertical cabin. The ship’s system panel told him what he expected. There wasn’t much left. Life support was stable, and the canopy appeared in good shape. Still, there were no comms, thrusters, FSD, weapons, or shields. He looked at the reboot control and shrugged. Worth a shot, he thought. A few millennia of computers taught humanity the importance of turning it off and back on to get things working again.

The reboot sequence did, in fact, bring back thrusters, comms, and even shields. The Knight was in much better shape than the Nightcrawler. Since they had been able to open the secure inner door, he considered docking to the Nightcrawler. It seemed worth being able to grab his things on board the derelict vessel. There was at least one item that was very important to him.

He maneuvered the Knight’s underbelly access port to docking position with the Nightcrawler’s rear port. The Nightcrawler had no comms, so he could not start the docking sequence remotely. It required him to force the procedure manually. Once a soft dock was established with the Nightcrawler, he mag-locked the systems together and ran back. On his way aft, he looked into the open quarters but didn’t see Draden or Xohn. They must still be cleaning up.

At the airlock, he toggled his RemLok and opened the port. He tapped into the manual dock sequence on the Nightcrawler’s outer controls. She responded and locked the two ships together in a hard dock with an airtight seal. Detecting the seal, the Knight’s airlock refilled with atmosphere. Once pressurized, the Nightcrawler’s systems opened the outer airlock.

He keyed in his access code to open the inner door inside the Nightcrawler airlock. The smoke from the rest of the ship rolled into the airlock. Lee decided it best to keep his RemLok on. He headed to his cabin grabbed his things, including his Leestian-hide jacket from Vic. He took a last look around, said a final goodbye, and went back to the Knight.

After stowing things, he returned to the flight deck, where he found Xohn at a workstation and a mostly cleaned-up Sylus Draden. His suit was still covered in splattered blood.

“Major Tom,” Sylus said, back to his politician’s tone. “I can’t thank you enough for coming back.” He stood in the middle of the flight deck, his hands together with fingers interlaced at his waist.

“Don’t mention it,” Lee said, unable to keep the sharpness from his voice. He looked to Xohn, “I got thrusters and shields back online.”

“I saw. I’m impressed. For not even an engineer, how did you manage it?”

“Oh, you know, the reboot trick.”

“Of course,” Xohn said with a soft smile.

“So you’re not a maintenance engineer, Major?” Draden asked.

“How about we cut the act? I’m not a Major, and you’re not a Consular.”

Draden looked confused and offended by the remark. “I assure you that I am. But then, who are you.”

“Look, you can just stop the game,” Lee snapped. His anger boiled up inside him, but he managed to speak calmly, staring at him from under his brow. “I’m your justice come due. For everything you’ve done to me and the people I care about.”

Draden smiled—his fake politician’s smile. “What I’ve done? Come now, really. There’s no need for dramatic grandstanding.”

“I know who you are—who you really are.”

“The question is, who are you? ”

“I’m the boy who had his mother ripped from him by a drug habit she picked up from an evil dirtbag.” Draden’s face had a genuinely puzzled look. “The same dirtbag that ordered an attack in Glist that killed my best friend. The same dirtbag that was trying to help the Imperials take over Hyades.”

“What? I’m the one who brought a fleet to support the fight against the Imperials!” He scoffed. “I sent out a desperate plea for aid. I’m trying to save the Hyades!”

Lee sighed. “You actually believe your own biowaste. Unbelievable.”

“This is a waste of time. I order you to take me back to Zamka Dock.”

“Order?” Lee laughed in his face. He had enough of the charade. “Why in Orion’s orifice would I take orders from Sylus Draden?”

Draden grunted, then coughed. His tell was obvious, but he tried to cover it nonetheless. “Sylus? Draden? Isn’t that the misunderstood Senator’s son that went missing?”

Lee remained stone-faced. “You’re not convincing anyone. We have all your secrets, Sylus. Your funneling of government funds to your father. Your support of Imperial contracts over independents. We have proof of your lies about Thargoid defenses, coverups, experiments, aculosis…”

Xohn piped up, “Your IP theft, secret agents, kill orders…”

“Who are you? How…?”

“We ripped it out of your private server.”

Lee watched in satisfaction as Draden’s eyes widened.

“Impossible!”

“Not for a kid who grew up on the streets skimming credits to survive, thanks to you. You were your own undoing.”

A menacing look flashed in his eyes, and his eyes began to dart around the flight deck.

There was a chirp from the console. Xohn was closest and turned to check it.

Draden locked eyes with Lee, “What do you intend to do?”

“If it was up to me—only me—I’d watch you die a slow, painful, agonizing death,” Lee said. “But, instead, I’m delivering you to justice.”

Draden scoffed, “No one will believe you.”

Xohn looked up from the console, “They’re here, Lee.”

“Who’s here?” Draden asked, looking between them both.

Lee just smiled.

“They’re broadcasting now,” Xohn said. He tapped a control, and a system-wide broadcast played over the intercom.

Attention: To all combatants and citizens in Chelum, this is Li Yong-Rui of Sirius Gov. I bring ample shipments of Byrox treatment. They are free to anyone with symptoms of aculosis.

I have come to the aid of citizens under my authority and to end hostilities. I hereby take command of the system of Chelum and its security forces.

The fleets of Senator Madius Draden will stand down and return to Imperial territory. If you do not cease your attacks, you will face the combined forces of the Sirius Navy, system security forces, and the Hyades Resistance forces. If you test me, your government and industry will face a trade embargo with all Sirius Corporation subsidiaries. The great people of the Empire will suffer economically. You have one hour to acknowledge and withdraw your forces.

To my forces and independent pilots, I require the apprehension of the man known as ‘Alden Duryss.’ A vote of the Sirius Gov Consulate has stripped him of his title for crimes against the people of Hyades and grave violations of Sirius Gov statutes. He is to be apprehended alive and brought before a Sirius Corporation board of inquiry for sentencing.

Thank you for your attention. Li Yong-Rui, out.

Lee gestured into the air and moved toward him, “You’re done, Sylus. It’s over.”

Draden took up a defensive stance opposite of Lee. They circled about the flight deck, Sylus trying to keep his distance. His angry scowl back at Lee contorted his pockmarked face. “No,” he said, continuing toward the forward canopy. “It’s not over.” He slammed the throttle forward faster than Lee anticipated for a man his age.

Lee raised out his hand and shouted, “No! Don’t!”

“Flight assist off,” the COVAS reported.

The ship thrust forward and shook violently. Creaking metal echoed throughout the ship. Draden ran around the flight deck, shoving Xohn on the way into the rear corridors. Xohn’s head hit the console, knocking him out.

Lee had no choice but to run for the controls, pull back the throttle, or risk the hard dock ripping both ships apart. Without sitting, he throttled back and checked on Xohn, floating unconscious in his boots. Lee cursed under his breath, then took off after Draden.

“Where are you going? There’s nowhere to go!” Lee shouted.

He looked down the corridor and saw Draden running out of his quarters with a sword in hand. Draden looked back at Lee over his shoulder but continued running farther into the Knight.

Lee cursed. He’s headed for the Nightcrawler. With a quick crouch forward, he pushed hard and repulsed his mag-boots to launch at Draden. His flight angle through the corridor required him to put a hand up to keep himself from hitting the ceiling. He softened the impact with his arm and pushed off, trying to redirect his trajectory. Sailing forward, he closed the gap, crashing into Draden from behind. “You’re not going any–”

A hand went into his face. The slender, bony fingers grabbed for the soft tissue of his eye sockets. Lee winced from the pain but wrestled on top of Draden to control the arm with the sword while fighting to get the man’s hand out of his eyes.

“You boy!” Draden spat. “You’ll not stop me.” He freed his sword arm and made a swipe as he turned toward the airlock. Lee pushed off of him, slamming his magboots against Draden’s head and shoulder. Draden crumpled forward but stumbled into a stagger, continuing down the corridor.

Lee flew into a corner of the corridor and scrambled for control of his momentum against the bulkhead. He adjusted his aim. Then, he launched himself back, feeling the burn in his legs from the effort.

Draden made it to the inner airlock door in the ‘floor.’ He opened it and scrambled to step down.

Lee flew at him as Draden began to descend into the airlock. Draden had positioning and swung the sword, the tip slicing across Lee’s face. He felt it cut his skin apart, shooting searing pain and floating droplets of blood spraying out of his peripheral vision.

He stopped himself at the ceiling, reeling from the pain. His adrenaline pumped.

“Sylus!” He shouted.

Draden looked above him with a sneering smile, “You were so close, little street thug. You’re Liana’s son, aren’t you? Little Lee Sollinger.”

The pain flared in his cheek with the blood rush. He held himself away from the corner with his hands above his head, poised against the corner of the adjoining corridor walls.

“Oh, don’t mind me. Wasn’t that what I promised you when you were a boy? Yes, I remember… ‘Don’t mind me. I won’t be long.’” He jeered.

Despite Yong-Rui’s wishes to bring Draden in, Lee knew he had to end this man.

Don’t get even, get ahead, Vic’s voice whispered in his mind. A sudden realization dawned on him. He knew what it meant. He knew how to do it. He pursed his lips, “Actually, you will, Sylus. You’ll be locked up for a long, long time.”

Lee used all his upper-body strength gained from penal colony labor to push himself with breathtaking speed and ferocity. Draden tried to put the sword in front of himself to block the incoming blow. Lee put his boots together and maximized the field. They ripped the blade from Draden’s grip, fastening it flat under his magboots. He rode on it like a hoverboard through the passage. With a fluid motion, Lee twisted himself backward to grab at and support the hilt of the sword with his hand to control its movement. It swung across, carving a horrific hunk of flesh from Draden’s cheek to his chin.

The flap of meat floated out from his face. Globules of blood sprayed and combined into bigger globs, undulating in the air around the wound. Draden grabbed at his face and let out an agonized scream that shifted from shock to desperation, ending in a raw cry of pain.

With the sword stuck to the bottom of his boots, Lee kicked off Draden’s chest, slamming him down to the back of the Nightcrawler airlock. Lee flew upward toward the Knight’s airlock and grabbed the edge of the port. Swinging his sword-armed legs into the Knight, he slammed the control pad next to the airlock to close the doors and release the docking clamps. Through the small window of the still-aligned airlock doors, he watched Draden’s clawed hands held toward the raw face he dared not touch. The man screamed silently in horror from the wound.

It was done.

He knew the doomed man hadn’t even realized his fate.

Lee’s hot breath clouded the window, then cleared up while he watched. With each view, he watched Draden and the Nightcrawler disappear into the darkness. Forever.

When the ship became nothing more than a glimmer, he gathered himself. He released the sword from his magboots and turned it in his hands, admiring the craftsmanship—a new memento of the end of Sylus Draden.

On the flight deck of the Knight, Lee checked on Xohn, who was tending to the sizable bruise forming at his temple.

“It’s over,” Lee declared. He sighed in relief.

Xohn winced, looking up at him. “Where’s Draden?”

“Lost.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s trapped on the Nightcrawler.”

“Can’t he just use an escape pod?”

“Doesn’t have one.”

“What?”

“I used it as a smuggling compartment. I never flew with an escape pod. That’s why we had to abandon ship to this one.”

“So he’s just floating there? Forever?”

Lee nodded. “Silent running has to stay on to give the ThermARC enough heat to keep life support running. It won’t show up on sensors, and there are no comms.” He paused and looked up at Xohn. “Sylus Draden is lost forever.”

Xohn whistled.

“Well,” Lee chuckled at a new thought. “He does have the ‘easy way out .’”

“The ‘easy way out’?”

“It’s a long story, but it’s kind of a poor pilot’s insurance. You never heard the tale of the ‘Easy Way Out’?”

Xohn shook his head.

“It’s a gun with a single shot in case you get stranded in space. Instead of starving to death, you…” He made a gun with his hand and pointed it at his mouth. “Based on what I saw of Sylus Draden, he’s too much of a coward to do it. He’s going to starve to death slowly. And the solution will be staring him in the face—taunting him. I can’t imagine a more suitable fate for a despicable being like him.”

“That’s… awful, but deserved, I think.”

“And in the end, I did come out ahead with a fancy new Python and an engineer for a co-pilot.”

Xohn smiled and nodded. “The honor is mine, Lee.”

Lee clapped Xohn on the back and walked up to the flight chair. He grabbed the back of it and gestured for Xohn to take the right chair.

They sat together, side-by-side, flying back to Zamka Dock.