With almost all of his men killed, Cardax leapt from his hiding place and ran between Keryn and Adam as he made a break for the door and freedom. Penchant, his skin now shedding the Avalon exterior and returning to its natural ebony exoskeleton, yelled a warning as he shot one of the remaining crewmen.
Keryn dropped her pistol, which was now dangerously close to being out of ammunition, and pulled a smaller weapon from her hip. Pulling the trigger, her projectile struck Cardax in the shoulder. Not slowing, the Oterian reached behind him and pulled loose the small dart. Staring in confusion, he tossed it to the side and continued running for the door.
The second dart struck Cardax in the small of the back. As soon as it broke through its skin, it began pumping a strong sedative into his bloodstream. Cardax knocked it free, but his movements became jerked and uncoordinated. Bumping into a table and knocking a couple bottles onto the ground, Cardax struggled toward the door.
Her third and final dart stuck firmly in the back of his thigh. Cardax’s body seized, his legs moving like dead weights. Gurgling in angry defiance, the Oterian smuggler pitched forward and smashed through a table, coming to rest unconscious on the bar floor.
Keryn sighed heavily and wiped the sweat from her brow. Looking over, she watched as Penchant killed the two crewmen who had been wounded in the battle. Adam walked over to her, choosing not to watch Penchant execute the men, and leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees. His breath was haggard and he was bleeding from a wound on his left arm.
“You’ve been hit,” she said, concerned.
Adam glanced down as though noticing for the first time. “It’s nothing,” he coolly replied. “I’m more exhausted than anything else.”
“Penchant,” she said through hitched breath, “please tell me you managed to secure us a room nearby.”
The Lithid climbed over the rubble and joined the other two in the middle of the room. “Of course I did,” he said from behind the featureless black face. “It’s in a nice building only three blocks away.”
Keryn and Adam exchanged exasperated looks. They both turned toward the massive sleeping form of the Oterian. Keryn had no idea how she was going to manage to drag his body for three blocks.
CHAPTER 6:
Yen paced impatiently by the door as the docking arm stretched toward his ship. He had chosen to dock with one of the external ports rather than waiting for the arduous docking within the internal hangar bays; he just didn’t have time to wait today. The hiss of air flooded the connecting passageway between the Revolution and his small transport and began twisting the sealing latches before the light above the doorway turned to green, verifying that the air beyond was breathable. He had left Earth in a hurry, allowing only sufficient crew to man his ship to board before they departed the planet. Though the rest of the Alliance was celebrating an unprecedented victory over the Terran Empire, he knew that their greatest threat was still to come. Yen desperately needed to pass the information gleaned from Earth on to the High Council. The fate of the universe couldn’t be gambled against soldiers celebrating their comparatively minor victory. Once the last seal released with a grinding of metal on metal, the door swung open as his ship entered zero gravity in order to match the connective tunnel between the ships. Though gravity would be reengaged once he boarded the Revolution, there was no way to pressurize the connection enough to match. Now weightless, Yen pulled himself forward, hurtling himself down the narrow passage, reaching the far door in seconds. Without waiting for the rest of his crew, Yen pulled himself inside and closed the door behind him, initiating the pressurization of the ready room.
Once gravity was reestablished, Yen shoved open the interior door and stepped into the antechamber, surprised at how many people awaited his return. Nearly half the ship lined the sides of the room, cheering wildly at the victory over the Empire and congratulating him on successful command of such an intricate invasion. Yen tried weakly to smile, but his mind was too preoccupied to be bothered with trivial niceties. Giving only meek nods of thanks and mumbles of appreciation, he forced his way through the crowd and into the main hall of the ship. As he left the antechamber, technicians appeared at his sides. Presenting hand held screens that scrolled volumes of data, his crewmen described troop movements and casualty statistics in a tsunami of information. Feeling suddenly overwhelmed, Yen brushed past them angrily, stopping them both short of the lift that would take him to the bridge. As they tried to step aboard, Yen psychically shoved them off the lift, watching with perverse pleasure as they crashed over one another into the hallway. Entering his command code for access to the bridge, he waved playfully as the doors slid shut on their stunned facial expressions.
Yen rode the lift in silence, feeling the thrill he’d come to associate with the release of his power. It had become so simple to use his powers, not just to psychokinetically push someone off an elevator as he had done moments before, but to control someone’s mind like he had done on Earth. It became reflexive, like an extension of his own body. He took control of someone’s mind and, with a mere thought, forced them to shoot themselves in the head.
With the memory came a wave of nausea. Yen remembered looking in the Terran’s eyes as they pulled the trigger, seeing the tears stream down their face. He didn’t know when it had begun, this perverse pleasure he got from using his powers, but it was starting to genuinely frighten him. Less and less, he felt like he was in control of the power surging through him. Much like on Earth, his power had taken the control and killed not just Dr. Solomon, but his own men as well. Now, firmly back among the Alliance, how long would it be, he wondered, before he lost control again? And would he still feel the perverse pleasure when it happened?
As the elevator slowed to a stop, the doors slid silently open on the bridge of the Revolution. The excited celebrations of the lower decks were contrasted by the somber mood of the command deck as the Avalon Captain Hodge turned at Yen’s arrival.
“Welcome back aboard,” she began, her voice singing the words in her high-pitched tone. “We received your report and have sent word to as many planets as we can reach with our communications array. A few have already begun filtering back to us. A few galaxies, including Protagon, have already replied. It seems that the message wasn’t just a bluff.” A little anger and stress crept into her soft voice. “If this is already happening, then we can really expect that… how many galaxies total?”
“Thirty-two,” Yen replied, exhausted.
“Then we can expect thirty-two galaxies to be without light or heat unless we do something soon.”
“Ma’am,” interrupted Vangore, the Wyndgaart communications officer. “I’ve got a message coming in. It’s coded high priority.”
“From another galaxy?” she asked.
“Negative, Captain,” he replied. “It’s being sent from a cargo transport traveling in sector Alpha-Alpha-Two-One.”
The members on the bridge turned to the display screen as the universe map highlighted in the designated sector and zoomed in. A dual sun galaxy appeared in the display, showing a pair of inhabitable planets.
“What’s the message?” Captain Hodge asked without looking away from the display screen.