“Now that’s scary. Do I get to retire to my log cabin?”
Max chuckled. “Mad-dog sure has plans for you, but it isn’t a life of pomp and ceremony that I can assure you!”
Aaron turned serious. “Max, where’s the crew? What’s happened?”
“I’m not hitting you with that just yet. Suffice to say, your crew is well, your ship awaits its commander, and peace talks are still ongoing between the USS and the Empire. So no one is keeping anything from you. Now is the time for full recovery. We have to run some more tests and monitor you for any side effects to the treatment—although we don’t anticipate any.”
Aaron raised a single eyebrow. “My ship?”
“That’s all you got out of that?”
“Well, you said the crew is safe, and there’s peace in the universe—goodwill among men. Now what’s this about my ship?”
“Don’t you recall Phoenix? Has your mind gone bonkers again?” Max picked up the scanning device.
Aaron choked down a laugh. “I was never officially given command of Phoenix. I considered it a loan.”
“Well it’s your ship. Vee and the entire crew were transferred officially to the USS Bureau of Intelligence. Phoenix was officially classified a covert operations cruiser and Vee was given temporary command until his ship was ready.”
“Vee? He accepted a promotion?” It seemed he had to die to get his friend, and XO, to accept a promotion.
“He accepted it with concessions,” Max said. “Four weeks ago he took command of the Endeavor, a new covert ops frigate assigned to Intelligence operations, directly reporting to Shepherd. So your ship awaits you, like I said.”
“How in all the known galaxies, did anyone know I would awaken, far less be fit for duty, that they reserved me a ship?”
“Well the way Shepherd sees it, you earned it big time. No one else needs it right now and they’ve been crawling all over it, fiddling around with the engines.”
Aaron sat forward.
“Where’s my mother, Max?”
“Unfortunately, after we devised your treatment, it didn’t appear to have any effect, initially. She departed for the Border Worlds with your father where another experimental treatment for persons in your condition was being developed. It was plan ‘B’.”
“Did you dispatch a message informing her I’d awakened?”
“Not as yet,” Max hesitated. “I didn’t want to bring her back prematurely. And certainly not during your recovery. Developing a treatment while you lay like sleeping beauty is one thing, but I’m afraid your mother would become too emotionally involved to treat to your recovery. Touch and go as it was these past two weeks. She left this with me. She said to give it to you and only you when you awoke. I don’t even know what’s on it.” He handed Aaron a datachip.
“Could you summon a comm tech for me?”
“That I can do.” Max said.
Aaron lay back on the smooth sheets. He’d look at the datachip later. He closed his eyes. Dark thoughts swirled, and he quickly reopened them. His heart pounded. He had to overcome whatever had taken ahold of him. He took slow, deep breaths. Then he closed his eyes again.
For now, the darkness left him in peace.
Chapter 6 – The Box
Darkness.
If there was something to see, he’d never know it, not even a sliver of light reached his eyes.
Avery tried to wiggle his wrists again. What felt like cold hard steel—braced them against a flat surface. Only his skin shifted when he tried to move.
A similar sensation gripped his neck and held his head rigid against another hard surface. His ankles were no different. He was completely immobile. At least the barbarians hadn’t removed his clothes.
His captors boarded his crippled ship and seized the crew immediately on emerging from the wormhole. He couldn’t be certain how much time passed, but it wasn’t long until they were transported to their present location.
The way they herded the crew, no one knew if they were aboard a ship or planet-side. Their captors placed masks on their faces blocking all sensation each time they changed location.
Now, their captors kept them in one small square space, no larger than his averaged sized quarters aboard Endeavor. Fifty-five men and women stacked together.
Although, they’d been given water and something that tasted like wheat as rations, they never saw their captors. The rations were dropped through an opening in the overhead. There were no clues as to where they’d been taken. No noise . . . no humming or vibrations. It’s almost as though they were in a vacuum.
The masks were removed for all the good it did—the box was completely dark. The crew could only tell one another apart by their voices. Feeling around the box for something—anything—revealed only flat surfaces. Most of the crew resigned to huddling on the floor.
He didn’t know what changed but soon they’d hustled him from the box—as the crew began to call it—and placed him in this confinement. A drop of water on his dry lips would be a mercy now.
Woosh.
A hiss of air escaped the room. Someone had entered. He strained his ears. Nothing. Then lights flickered. A man sat in front him. He wanted to believe he was conjuring this image, but he knew somewhere somehow it was true. The man just wouldn’t quit. He looked exactly like the image on file they’d documented after the battle of Atlas Prime.
Ben James.
Chapter 7 – Outer Rim
“I’d threaten physical violence but I think you’d just laugh” – Aaron Rayne
Recovery Ward, Medical Deck
Aaron drifted between sleep and wake for two days. The apprehension he felt about letting himself sleep had faded somewhat, and he’d drifted into the first restful slumber he’d had the past two weeks.
Unlike the last time staying in this insufferable place, he wasn’t being hauled off to some tribunal immediately. He allowed himself to relax.
He could sleep for a week.
Distant voices reached his ears. Except this time he was sure he was awake. This isn’t a dream. He kept his eyes closed and strained his ears. He recognized those voices. The first voice belonged to Max.
“Critical . . . stage of . . . I cannot predict . . . Shepherd . . .”
A second voice responded.
“Doctor . . . but this is critical . . . Aaron has . . .”
They were really arguing about him while he was in another room? That just wouldn’t do. He stretched and crawled off the bed into the cold wheelchair. Max said he’d be able to walk again soon, but he’d have to work hard at it. He was sure the doctor could magically fix his legs, but was instead choosing to make him do it the hard way.
It was strange, he didn’t get the sense he was learning to walk because of the injury, more almost like he’d never walked before. Maybe Max could give him some legs like Lee’s arm. Vee, Lee, Flaps and the others, were probably off on some thrilling assignment, and he was stuck here. Time to be the insufferable, angry, frustrated patient. Medical people didn’t like difficult patients, especially difficult and cranky ones.