The Awakening (The Hyperscape Project Book 1) (24 page)

 “Yeehaw!
Didn’t see that coming, did you? You metal bastard!”

Nick flew clear
of the debris field and pulled an Immelmann maneuver to get a better view of
the hyperspace window. Massive, exploding sections of the Vontuk’s hull poured
in through the huge window. There was no doubt that the mighty Mok’tu vessel
would not survive. Nick watched in awe as inner pieces of the ship flooded into
hyperspace. It was an amazing testimony to the destructive power of hyperspace
technology. As a scientist, he had only imagined hyperspace as a way for faster
space travel. He had totally ignored the destructive implications of the
technology. No doubt his military backers were fully aware of its potential as
a weapon. How naïve he had been.

After a few
minutes of reflection, Nick finally came back to his senses and switched off
the hyperspace window. Mok’tu soldiers floated in the debris field, moving in
the distance as they struggled in the weightless vacuum of hyperspace. The
creepy montage of ship debris and living machines distracted him for a few more
moments.
How long would they survive?
He wondered.

Nick quickly put
some distance between him and the dangerous twisted metal, scanning for
gravitational anomalies to get a fix on his location. He had a plan. He almost
always had a plan. But would his luck hold out?

He kept a
watchful eye on the module’s power level, turning off every non-essential
system he could. If he could locate the probe that had been launched from the
Ashok before his salvaged battery power ran out, he would at least have a
chance. Without precious power, he would freeze to death or suffocate in the
cold empty void of hyperspace. It would be too risky to jump back to normal
space now. He needed to find that probe.

Captain Arya sat
quietly on the bridge of the Ashok as the ship’s engines continued to put
distance between them and the enemy. Unlike the heavier ships of the Mok’tu and
the Dragorans, the Ashok had speed on its side. The Grok was already fading
from their sensors. Its captain had hesitated too long before giving chase and
would not be able to catch up to them now.

Signaling the
Dragorans with the location of Nick’s rendezvous with the Mok’tu had worked
beautifully. Maybe too well. The Dragorans never suspected that the signal Arya
had sent was a ruse. The Dragorans trusted their spies, maybe a little too
much. They had never expected Arya to get free from the clutches of their
insidious spy nanites. The Dragoran nanites were programmed with a number of
fail-safes, one of which was a command to survive at all cost. But in a case of
total failure with no chance of escape, the nanites that inhabited the spy’s
brain would simply terminate their host and then self destruct. Most likely, no
one had ever survived their removal.

Despite the
emotional pain the Dragorans had caused her, Arya had discovered a perk to
having carried the nanites.  She had only just now begun to understand the
vague images she saw in her mind, but having been a Dragoran spy might have
given her an edge over the enemy.  She had begun to piece together
glimpses of Dragoran codes, procedures, and other images that flitted around in
her head. Somehow a portion of the knowledge contained within the artificial
neural network of the spy nanites had been imparted to Arya’s brain. Some sort
of neural bleed-back effect. That’s how she was able to trick the Dragorans
with a coded signal. But Nick may have paid the price for her success.

Arya replayed
the vid of Nick’s craft plunging into hyperspace. At least it looked like Nick
had survived entry. But would he now die alone in hyperspace? Would he find his
way home or come out into some other part of the galaxy? Even if he managed to
make it out of hyperspace alive, he could end up far from any habitable
planets. She couldn’t shake an image of Nick’s frozen body, floating along in
hyperspace, encased in the metal casket of a powerless hyperspace module.
Ironically, the elusive domain of hyperspace that Nick sought so hard to
uncover may turn out to be his final resting place.

She stared out
the forward view-screen of the Ashok.  Nick had known the risks. The
entire crew had known, and they had all signed off on the plan. The Mok’tu
Star-Killer had to be destroyed at any cost. The research being carried out
aboard that ship had to be eliminated. No trace of the data could be allowed to
remain. Nothing could be left that the Mok’tu could use to begin their research
again. Arya kept telling herself that Nick’s plan had been necessary, that it
had to be done, but all her inner talk didn’t change the way she felt.

At least there
was one good thing about the Mok’tu. They guarded their secrets well. They
always kept their high priority research projects on one vessel. The Vontuk was
the Star-Killer assigned to acquire the hyperspace technology. That’s where the
freking Tac Squad had come from. All the Mok’tu’s research into hyperspace was
most likely contained within that one ship. The Mok’tu tended to be overly
confident of their superiority. A flaw they shared with the Dragorans. It was
their biggest weakness. They would have felt safe with their hyperspace
research tucked safely away aboard one of their most powerful ships. With luck,
Nick’s sacrifice had destroyed the Mok’tu’s entire hyperspace research program
in one lethal blow. At the very least, it should delay their progress long
enough to give the Resistance a fighting chance.

Arya gazed again
at the video of Nick’s final moments.  Without looking up from the screen,
she asked for a status report from her first officer. “Sirok, what’s our ETA?”
She pushed a few buttons on her console to change the video’s wavelength to the
infrared spectrum.

“Estimated
arrival in three days, Aris time. That is, if the charts you acquired on that
commerce planet are accurate.”

“Good. I’ll be
in the…um,
my
ready-room. Keep me posted.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Arya pushed
herself up from the captain’s chair and walked through the ready-room doors.
The room felt different without the powerful presence of Argos. So cold and
quiet, like the spooky emptiness of a deserted building. She could almost feel
the spirit of Argos sitting behind his desk.

A voice suddenly
broke the silence, calling out her name.
“Arya.”

Arya jumped. “I
must be going mad. That sounded like…Argos?  But how can that be?” She
panned her gaze around the room, scanning nervously for a ghostly figure.

“Arya, it’s
your old friend Argos. Prophecy is upon us,”
the voice continued.

This time Arya’s
cat-like ears pinpointed the location of the voice. She spun toward the desk. A
dim light emanated from a monitor, illuminating the chair directly in front of
it with an eerie glow. For a split second Arya swore she saw Argos sitting
there, his back as straight and strong as always.

“
I have recorded
this message for you and you alone. The computer sensed that you are the only
one in the room and activated the display.”
The voice came from the monitor
on the desk.

Arya was
relieved and saddened at the same time. It was only a recording. Not some
ghostly embodiment of Argos. Part of her wished it
was
Argos somehow
returning from the beyond. She so desperately wanted to see him, talk to him
again. But she’d seen him die with her own eyes.  She knew he was gone.

Ignoring the
burning of emotion in her eyes, she moved around the desk to see an image of
Argos displayed on the screen. He had been like a father to her. It was her
fault that he was dead, killed by her own hand. Everyone had told her that she
wasn’t to blame, that there was nothing she could have done. The nanites had
gained complete control of her brain, and she wasn’t responsible for her
actions. But that was of little comfort. The nanites may have blocked her
outgoing nerve impulses, severing any control she had of her body, but they didn’t
keep her from seeing and hearing everything that unfolded. Perhaps that was
part of the Dragorans plan; keep the host weak by preying on their emotions.
Force the host’s brain to watch as their own body murdered everyone they cared
about. It was a torture of immeasurable cruelty. She had been a prisoner in her
own body, screaming and clawing to get out. Begging to find some way to
overcome the nanite’s control and stop her own finger from pulling the trigger.
She could still feel the pistol in her hand, still hear the final moan from
Argos as he hit the floor.

Argos must have
suspected her brain had been compromised. He had tried to covertly scan her
that day, in this very room. His attempt had been a fatal mistake. The nanite’s
artificial personality, with its almost paranoid state of awareness, had
detected his attempt to scan her and sprang into action. A split second later,
Argos lay dying on the floor. The vivid memories were not something she would
ever forget. No matter how hard she forced it to the back of her mind, it was
always there, haunting her. Now the vision of Argos on the screen brought it
all flooding back, every terrible second of it.

Tears flowed
unchecked down her face, dripping onto the desk as she reached to touch the
image of Argos on the display.

“Argos, I am so
sorry.” The pain in her eyes was starkly clear from the reflection in the
ancient ship’s bell that was proudly displayed on the desk. The bell had been a
gift to Argos from the Admiral. The reflection of her face startled her. The
last time she had seen an image of herself staring back from a mirror, it
hadn’t been her at all.  Instead, she’d seen the face of a monster looking
back at her. A monster with
her
face, her eyes, her mouth.

Arya turned away
from her reflection.  She still couldn’t bear to look at herself. 

On the screen,
centered in front of a paused vid of Argos, a small window prompted her for a
password in order to continue playback. Arya stared at the flashing cursor,
lost in her own regrets. Suddenly, the request for a password tugged at her
brain and she became more present in the moment. “Password? What password?” She
frowned in concentration. Argos wanted to tell her something but he hadn’t
bothered to give her a clue how to access it.

“Password,” she murmured. 
“What could it be?”

She tried
entering a couple of passwords that she had used in the past, but it gained her
no entry into Argos’ message. Trying to use a patience she didn’t feel, she
punched in a few pass codes she thought Argos may have used. Nothing worked.
She thought hard about what kind of password he could have possibly used to
encrypt the video, but everything she tried failed. Arya’s frustration was
mounting. It had been building all day. She had felt helpless to save Argos,
helpless to protect Nick, and now helpless to even hear a message from her dead
Captain. Her emotions were beginning to get the best of her. Everything she had
been through lately and now this?
Is this some sort of cruel joke?

Arya closed her
eyes and breathed deeply and slowly in an attempt to calm herself.
No, Argos
would never play a joke on her. He must have encrypted the message for a
reason.

She took another
deep breath.  “Alright then. What could Argos have been thinking? He must
have set the code to something I would know. But what?”

She reached over
and pressed a button on the console, starting the video over from the
beginning.
“Arya, it’s your old friend Argos. Prophecy is upon us.”

She paused the
vid, trying to decipher that last cryptic phrase.

“Prophecy is
upon us?”

Her brow lowered
as she concentrated. The Captain wasn’t one for believing in prophecy. Still,
he may have used something common to their ancestry, an old story they would
have both heard in childhood.
Could it be?
What was the name of that
prophecy her mother had told her as a child? The one of the noble warrior from
a distant world. She knew the story, but what was its name?
The Prophecy
of….

“Frek!” she
shouted in frustration.

It was no use.
She couldn’t remember the name of the freking story. Who else might know? The
ship’s database was far from complete, but…. “What the hetek.”
It
wouldn’t hurt to give it a try. Without touching the console, Arya’s wireless
neural interface signaled the computer to run a search.

“Searching,” the
computer stated in a mechanical voice.

Arya sat down in
the Captain’s chair and waited impatiently, hoping.

After a short
time, the computer stated, “One result found.”

Arya leaned
forward, her heartbeat quickening. Maybe the answer
was
in the database,
after all.

The Prophecy of
Arimis displayed on the screen in front of her.

“No. Not
Arimis,” she sighed with discontent. She was familiar with the prophecy the
computer referenced. It was a well known story, but not the one she was
searching for.