REGIME CHANGE Read online

  “No. I would still be the same person I am today.”

  “Somehow, I doubt that,” Deis replied.

  Three

  Crase

  Grit bit at his face as he trudged through the sand-ridden streets. Farax had seen better days, that was for sure, but so had the man limping along, his eyes wincing as the grains pelted him in a swirling attack. Why did I come back? The question reverberated in his mind like the strike of a war drum, but in his heart, he knew why, and he hated himself for it. It was reliance on someone else that brought him to this world; to the door of the only person he trusted besides Nuelar.

  The door opened without him knocking, and Tesera’s eyes bore into his, solemn and scolding at the same time. “I thought you were dead,” she said softly.

  “You wear your dreams on your sleeve?”

  “No, but I do find logic more infallible than passion. You went up against a ship and crew outgunned and outmatched. Tell me, how else should I have seen the outcome?”

  “Nuelar was killed,” Crase said, but he wasn’t sure if it was to change the subject or just to make her stop talking about his inevitable failures. Perhaps both.

  “I’m sorry. He was a good man,” she replied. “Come in?”

  Crase stepped heavily into the home, the darkness of it taking several moments for his eyes to adjust. Tesera loved living in dim spaces which he often thought reflected her view of the world. “He wasn’t that good. He turned on me at the last moment, siding with the Lechuns who left him behind on Lechushe’.”

  Tesera walked around his lumbering form and grabbed a flask. “Do you still try convincing yourself of that truth?”

  “That’s the only kind of truth I need, easily acceptable when it falls in line with your ambitions,” he said, reaching for the flask after she finished pouring a glass. She handed it to him and he took a long pull. “Besides, who will tell me otherwise if my worldview is an illusion?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and took a sip from the glass, the yellowish fluid lightly staining the surface as it settled back to the bottom. “I’m not interested in living inside an illusion, Crase. You know this.”

  “Yeah. You’ve told me countless times.” He turned towards a chair and fell into it, groans uttering from his body under the creaking of the furniture.

  “And countless times I will repeat it. Let me grab my kit and see to your wounds.” Tesera placed the glass on the table and glided on bare feet to the shelves in the back of the room, grabbing a small canvas bag and returning, with no footsteps sounding off the floorboards of her home.

  Crase lifted his pant’s leg to reveal a gash, the skin already darkening around the gaping wound. “I got this for my troubles.”

  “This is a fresh wound compared to how long you’ve been gone.”

  “I made a few stops along the way. Some people owed me money.”

  “Isn’t that always the case with you?” Tesera asked, not looking up at him as she dabbed moist cloths at Crase’s wound. He watched her work.

  “Not when I come to see you,” he replied.

  “Yes? Well, I believe the debt between us is the other way around. Of course, I would be a fool to ever believe you would repay me.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I doubt either of us can put a price on the past,” she replied, looking up at him. “This is going to hurt.”

  Crase took another pull from the flask. “It always does.” With those words, she poured a charcoal-colored powder into the wound. The sound of singeing flesh erupted from the gash as the powdery residue clouded around his leg. He winced, moaning through clenched teeth as she knelt next to him, watching the effects of the medicine work.

  “Please be still, I need to watch for the right time to neutralize it before it eats too much away,” Tesera said.

  Crase had plenty he wanted to say, but all he could manage was a hissing sound through his teeth. After a few moments, a white, chalky powder filled the wound, instantly settling the acidic burn of the previous chemical. With the relief came a flurry of curses directed at no one in particular. Tesera ignored it as she worked.

  “This should heal fine,” she said, grabbing gauze and wrapping his leg. “You need to keep it dry for a few days.”

  “Next time, don’t skimp on the anesthesia,” Crase said, lifting the empty flask, his teary eyes looking back into hers.

  “I wasn’t expecting you to return in this condition. Besides, I used it to console my own wounds while you were gone.”

  “Which wounds would that be?” Crase asked as he leaned forward, his nose inches from hers.

  She stopped wrapping his leg and sighed as she looked up at him. “You need to stop tempting fate or you will be killed.”

  “I will if you give me a reason to stay. Just say it.”

  For a long, silent moment, the two of them stared into each other’s eyes. Crase’s heart beat wildly in his chest with expectancy. She was the only person he thought of on his return trip, and he imagined the same was true for her. he could see it between each blink of her eyes, but she kept it just beneath the surface, not saying the words he longed to hear. Finally, a movement, but she backed away, glancing towards the door and back at him. Her silence told him everything and nothing. And then she walked quietly away.

  Alone with his thoughts, Crase contemplated the door, but he no more wanted to step out into the looming sandstorm than he wanted to lop off his own leg. She’ll come around, he thought as he reclined back in the chair. I hope.

  Four

  Ilium

  With the ship cast in darkness, Ilium’s heart pounded. Nothing electronic worked, not even the gods forsaking emergency lighting wired throughout the ship. “Stavis, what are we going to do?” He asked as two men from a small security detail closed in behind him.

  “I think the device was activated,” she replied solemnly. She held her weapon in her hand, using the laser sight as a means to see. The temperature of the offline ship already grew colder after mere minutes of the engines shutting down. “You,” she said, pointing towards one of the guards, “go to Security and inform the CoS of my location. Tell him to send every available unit to the XO’s stateroom.” The guard nodded and moved towards the door. “Also, have him get in contact with Medical to send someone to take care of the body.”

  “Aye, sir,” the guard responded before running from the door, a small flashlight his only means of seeing where he was going.

  “What about me, sir?” The remaining guard asked.

  Stavis stared up at him. “You’re protecting the Captain.”

  “I think I can take care of…” Ilium started before she darted her eyes in his direction. Even in dim lighting, the intensity of her gaze suggested she wasn’t taking no for an answer. “Probably a good idea, though, Lieutenant.”

  She smirked and moved around the room. “We need to see if there’s any bulkhead panels recently removed where Quino could hide the device. I feel like it has to be close by if it reacted to his death so quickly.”

  “You think it was wired to him in some way?” Ilium asked.

  “No, I think it calculated his heartrate and once his heart stopped beating, then it activated.”

  “If that’s the case, maybe we can find the heartrate monitor and use it to bring the electricity back,” Ilium suggested, moving towards Quino’s body. Quino lay in a heap, blood pooled beneath him which Ilium didn’t notice in the darkness until he noticed the stickiness of his fingers. “What am I looking for?”

  “If it’s not a device mounted to his body, then it will be an implant. Check his wrists and chest for an exterior monitor. Otherwise, let the medical crew open him up,” Stavis replied while her hands followed the seams in the paneling along the bulkhead. “But I think it’s a longshot. The kind of equipment used for something like this is usually a one-time use item. I doubt it can be reset.”

  “We need to try,” Ilium replied. “Guard, can you check the bulkhead o
ver there to help Lieutenant Stavis conduct her search? Time is running out.”

  “Aye, sir,” the guard snapped, lowering his weapon into its holster and kneeling to conduct his own search. Ilium was sure the heavy armor made doing the job more difficult, but he appreciated the effort. Without power to run the ship, they were a floating target, or at risk of being caught by the gravitational pull of a celestial object. Either way could result in their destruction and it wasn’t something high on his agenda to allow happen.

  His hands patted down Quino’s body, and beneath the robe, Ilium found a small metal device attached to the man’s chest. “I think I found something.”

  Stavis stopped searching her area and shifted over to Ilium. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, shine your light on his chest.”

  The red laser fell on Quino’s body and next to the entry wound they found a rectangular object implanted in his skin. “It’s hard to tell in this light, but it looks like a fried electronic device. It’s possible this was the monitoring element supplying data to the device,” Stavis said, “but we need better lighting and better minds to figure this out.”

  The sound of several footsteps running down the passageway drew Ilium’s attention to the door. Outside, several beams of white light danced along the bulkheads and reflected off the deck. Soon after, the first of a dozen guards stopped outside the door. “Lieutenant, the chief sent us to you, how can we be of assistance?”

  Stavis rose from the deck and approached the guard. “We’ve experienced an EMP attack and we need to find the device to shut it down. The device is roughly the size of a waste bin and could be hidden inside of a faux wall bulkhead, but it could be anywhere else as well. This is a large ship and we need as many eyes searching for it as possible.”

  “Each of us could go to a different department and engage a full-scale search,” the lead guard suggested.

  Stavis nodded. “Do it and be quick. Our lives depend on it.”

  “Aye, sir,” the guard said, turning to his men. “You heard the Lieutenant, you three move to the fifth deck and work your way up. You three take the eighth level and work down. I will go to the bridge and the rest of you will search the hangar and cargo bay. Got it?”

  The guards affirmed and instantly darted off in the directions they were sent as the lead guard turned to face Stavis. “I’ll send a messenger to you every hour or when we find something.”

  “How will you know if comms are down?” Ilium asked.

  Stavis turned, “Their radios are battery powered, but we don’t have very many of them.”

  “Correct,” the guard said. “We have five operational, two are being repaired. Thankfully the CoS didn’t get rid of them when we went through the upgrade to ship’s system comms.”

  “He’s always been forward thinking,” Stavis said. “Good luck, I hope you find it soon.”

  “Yes, sir,” the guard replied, turning and running down the passageway, disappearing into the darkness.

  Stavis turned back to Ilium and he noticed the worry on her face. “I’m beginning to think we should have done something when we first discovered the device,” she said.

  Ilium hated to agree with the sentiment, but he believed in her ability to pull off the surveillance to allow them to get to the bottom of Quino’s plan. She had done that, but still, being thrust into darkness on a dead ship wasn’t much of a consolation prize for being right. “We’ll find it,” he said finally. “We have to.”

  Five

  Gen-Taiku

  Cold air billowing from the vents of the ship stirred Gen from her slumber. The temperature plummeted far enough to cause the tears in her eyes to harden to slush and she wiped it away, grimacing as the tiny shard of ice racked against her eyeballs. Only the dull blue light from the center console emitted any illumination to see, and she found herself trembling as she rose from the steel deck. “Are you trying to kill me, Pilot? I didn’t mean anyone any harm. I’m trying to save lives.”

  “Save your own,” Pilot replied as the door to the bridged cycled open with a whooshing sound. “Do not return.”

  Gen turned to see the opened door, pale emergency lighting providing a means to escape, but she didn’t want to take it, she wanted to plead her case. “You’re making a mistake.”

  “The only mistake was you coming here. Now, leave.”

  Gen inhaled a gulp of cold air, burning her lungs on the way down as she felt the first signs of a deep cough urging its way up. She covered her mouth with a blue-tinged hand, realizing how numb it felt in the cold. Anger fueled her as she stepped off the bridge and into a warmer part of the ship. Part of her wanted to feel relieved as the warmth was welcomed, but resentment overcame any sense of gratitude. Her boot heels clacked against the deck as she traversed the narrow passageways. Coming to the ladder well leading to the cargo bay, she paused, looking back at the bridge to see the door cycle closed again, shutting her off from the AI and any chance of convincing it to listen to her. “To hell with you,” she hissed, grabbing hold of the railing and working her cold, stiff body downward.

  At the bottom of the ladder well, she found the opened cargo bay door cranked open. The ramp led down to the landing pad where sand crept along the surface like slithering reptiles cresting over one another with each gust of wind. She pulled her goggles down over her face, hating this part of the day, when something caught her attention. She knelt behind a box and peered out the cargo ramp and noticed armed security moving about the landing area. They were military, and she knew what they were after.

  “Pilot, I know you don’t trust me, but please don’t send me out there now. Those guards are looking for resistance fighters, if they see me, they will haul me in and kill me.”

  Silence followed as her chest heaved up and down with each frantic breath. She looked around the box again, watching the guards move in groups of two, weapons held at the ready as they marched in step next to one another. The surveillance of the area was just getting underway, which meant boarding open ships was imminent. She hated to think about the moment they boarded the Replicade and found her cowering in a corner with her blaster drawn. How many can I take out before they kill me? Not many, she thought, looking at her weapon.

  “Pilot, please. I’m begging you to let me stay until they dispatch. If they board this ship and find me, it will implicate your crew,” she urged. There was truth in her words. The crew may not be involved with the Pilatian rebellion, but if there was evidence of hiding a member of that rebellion, then guilt by association would see their ship destroyed, and with it, their lives. “Think about it, or whatever you AI computers call it. By protecting me, you’re saving your crew. I promise not to touch anything and as soon as they’re gone, I’ll leave too.” Her voice cracked with fear as she cowered behind the box, dim sunlight shining in next to her feet where she watched the brightness flicker as movement outside cast shadows by obscuring the light. How close they were to boarding she did not want to think about because she was soon to experience it, she felt it in her bones as her body thawed from the iciness she felt from the bridge.

  “Please. Don’t let them find me,” she said, barely above a whisper.

  The soft mechanical churn of a motor purred behind her and she watched the light of the cargo bay dim as the ramp closed. She dared to look back, the burden of discovery falling away as the outside world closed off to her. Once the ramp fully shut, the sound of the locks bolting closed filled her ears. As loud as it was, causing a ringing in her ears, she finally let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you, I owe you one.”

  Pilot said nothing, but a blinking blue light across the cargo bay, shining in Gen’s direction led her to believe the AI was watching her. She stared at it, hoping to elicit a response, but silence was her only companion on the mighty warship. “I suppose I deserve the silent treatment for breaking in and poking around, but you have to believe I had good intentions in doing so. My people are held captive by the Empire. All we want is our freedo
m and some of us are willing to do anything to get it. Where is the fault in that?”

  She stared at the blinking light she associated with the AI and for a long moment it continued blinking, before going out, and with it, the emergency lighting; casting Gen in darkness once again. At least it’s warm down here, she thought as she wrapped her tunic around her body and leaned her head against the bulkhead.

  Six

  Brendle

  While stepping into the elevator, Brendle’s thoughts shifted to his last day on the Telran. Other than thinking he was going to die, the trepidation in his heart felt exactly the same. Why would the Emperor’s daughter want to see me? What does she have planned? It was those questions that filled him with dread.

  The Greshian woman from the hospital stood next to him, her attire more in-line with the Pilatians, than Greshian, but he assumed it was to help her fit in, despite her pale skin and wholly Greshian features. “So, do I get a brief on this meeting or am I going in cold?” Brendle asked as the elevator began its ascent.

  The woman cleared her throat. “Princess Herma sent me to come get you. I am not privileged enough to know her interests in you, just that not bringing you would fill her with disappointment.”

  “Well, I’d hate to fill her with that,” Brendle said, trying to be funny, but only eliciting a snide glare from his escort.

  “We shall see, it’s not looking good so far,” the woman replied, an obvious attempt at a jab.

  Brendle smiled, more from nervousness than the apparent rise he got out of the woman. “I’m out of practice. I was much better at kissing up to higher ups when I was still a Greshian.” Why did I say that? I’m just digging myself a deeper grave for Princess Herma to bury me.