Hellfire - Autonomy

Chapter 1-1

1

Drake sat on the bridge of the Dagger, only vaguely aware of his crew’s activity around him. There was no danger, for the moment at least, and he had total faith in their ability. He’d chosen them carefully and they’d repaid his faith a dozen times during the turbulent past few weeks.

While he was barely aware of what his crew were doing at that moment they still filled his thoughts. He couldn’t stop thinking about what had been done to them. What he had done to them, however unintentionally. What they didn’t yet know had happened to them.

He’d always been able to focus carefully with his ears and eyes and become aware of his crew, aware of their moods and their activities. He’d been captain of the Dagger for many years now and over that time he'd learnt to be a good captain, one who could sense the state of his crew and knew when to nudge them and when to let them be.

Now everything had changed. Now he could truly sense the mood of his crew. If he wanted he could reach out and experience what each individual was feeling, whether they were in the same room or not.

Now he could do more than nudge them with a few words. He could reach into their minds and force them to do his will. He could do that because every member of the crew was now linked to the Dagger. More precisely, their souls were tied to him and the hellship Azimuth, the hellship Drake had renamed the Dagger when he took control of it.

None of the crew knew they’d been serving on board a hellship. At some point Drake knew he was going to have to break the news to them that they had been and that they’d now been tied to it forever. The thought of doing that, of admitting it was his actions which led to them being in that position, made him feel sick inside.

The fact it had been an accident, an unexpected side effect, felt like a flimsy excuse. It had happened while they rescued a couple of hundred children from being ritually sacrificed by a group of Dark Acolytes. That explained what had happened to the crew, but it didn’t excuse it.

If they’d been tied to any other hellship they’d be excruciatingly aware of their situation by now. The hellship would have taken great pleasure in letting them know they were under its control. Grinding their faces in that reality both directly and through its control of their minds.

But the Azimuth was not like other hellships. Not anymore. And it would never return to that behaviour as long as Drake was its captain. Not that the Azimuth was any different than its brethren. It still hated all living creatures, especially sentient beings. Nothing was going to change that. Hellships lived to hate and cause suffering, and were experts at both.

Many years before the Azimuth had taken Drake’s sister, Catherine. It took her and made her its captain, though she had no more control of the ship than any of the other poor souls it had captured.

Over time the Azimuth had worked on crushing Catherine, draining the life out of her with unspeakable suffering. Drake had managed to board the Azimuth at one point, had tried to rescue his sister, but had discovered it was all an elaborate trap.

The Azimuth had taken huge pleasure in his pain and in Catherine’s, and then it had thrown Drake off to live his life knowing his sister was suffering and he’d completely failed to save her. But not before it made him a dark promise that when Catherine died it would hunt him down and make him take her place.

Drake had continued to try and rescue Catherine, managing to buy his own small ship with the aim to trade his way to something much bigger and more dangerous. The final aim was to disable the Azimuth and rescue Catherine, but making the money to trade up to more powerful ships proved to be much harder than he’d imagined.

Before he’d reached anywhere near that point Catherine had died. The first Drake knew of her death was when the Azimuth tracked him down and dragged him off his battered freighter. The hellship had taken great pleasure in explaining how Catherine had finally died before beginning the process of ensnaring Drake’s soul and making him its captain.

But the Azimuth made a grave mistake in doing so. Though he didn’t know it himself, Drake was one of the rare humans known as immunes, those whose souls a hellship could not touch or take. Not that an immune would be safe on board a hellship. If anything hellships took more pleasure in inflicting physical torment on such people than on those it could take control of, but there would never be a link between a hellship and an immune’s mind.

The process of turning someone into a Captain went far beyond normal possession by a hellship. The Azimuth forced itself deep into Drake’s mind. Despite him being an immune a link was formed, just as it was for all hellship captains.

But being an immune changed everything. The link was formed but Drake wasn’t under the Azimuth's control. Instead the opposite happened. The Azimuth found itself bound to Drake, found itself under his control.

It had fought as hard as it could. It had raged and screamed, lashed out and even pleaded, but to no avail. For as long as Drake lived the Azimuth was stuck obeying his orders.

Drake took advantage of the situation. The Azimuth was well known as a hellship so he renamed it the Dagger. He gave the poor unfortunates the Azimuth had collected before him the blissful release of slipping away from life, then took on a fresh crew to replace them. The new crew knew nothing of the Azimuth, they simply signed on to the Dagger.

With the powerful Dagger at his command, Drake set out to fulfil a promise he’d made to himself and to his dead sister. A promise to hunt down and destroy every hellship he could find. He couldn’t save Catherine but he could stop others from suffering as she had.

He’d guessed there was a risk that over time Azimuth might manage to corrupt those who served on board so he’d decided to replace the crew regularly. If no one spent too long on board he hoped to keep them from coming to harm.

What he hadn't known, and so learnt the hard way, was that people existed who were the opposite of immunes. People who would fall to the influence of the Azimuth within days of coming on board rather than years.

Among the first batch of crew was a man named Jacobs. Jacobs proved to be one of those who were extremely susceptible to the hellship’s influence and fell to the Azimuth far quicker and far faster than Drake had believed was possible. By the time Drake realised what was happening it was already too late. Jacobs’ soul was tied to the ship. He would never again be able to leave the Dagger for more than a few days at a time.

When he found out, Jacobs took it surprisingly well. Over time Drake took great care never to use the link to force his will on him, which also helped Jacobs to cope. Even so, Drake still carried huge guilt over failing Jacobs and he’d vowed to never let it happen to anyone else.

For many years he’d succeeded. All of the crew, no matter how much he depended on them, were replaced before the effects of the hellship could be too severe. Occasionally those who would fall to the hellship incredibly quickly joined the crew, but Drake now knew what to watch out for and ensured they left again soon after, well before they could suffer any long-term harm.

At least he had done that for many years. When Jensen came on board it quickly become clear he’d fall to the influence of the Azimuth more quickly than most. Despite him quickly becoming a valuable member of the crew, Drake had made the decision to find a station where the youngster could be safely left along with several other crew members who were nearing their safe tolerance of exposure to the Azimuth. All of them would receive a handsome bonus as a thank you for their service.

Before that could happen the Commander came on board. He’d sold Drake a story about carrying vital medicines but that had been a lie. The Commander revealed he was a member of the Phoenix Conglomerate, a small but powerful faction which spent huge efforts to recover unusual and powerful technology. Instead of medicines the Commander had smuggled a bomb on board the Dagger, one he’d then used to blackmail Drake into a long-running mission.

One condition the Commander insisted on was that none of the crew could be allowed to leave until the mission was over. Drake couldn’t explain why some of the crew needed to leave, couldn’t tell the Commander or anyone else that the Dagger was really a hellship, so he was left trying to get the mission completed as quickly as possible.

It wasn’t possible. The Commander kept pushing for them to do more and with the bomb threatening the entire crew Drake had no choice other than to agree. Even then, some of the crew in danger of falling should have been able to leave the ship by the time the mission was over.

But these were far from normal circumstances. The mission had taken them to areas of space where strange energies bathed the ship, then into conflict with a hellship and so into the path of unnatural influences. The cumulative effects had been far more than was needed to tip those crew who were vulnerable over the edge, for the Azimuth to finish getting its hooks into them.

Drake had struggled with guilt ever since Jacobs fell to the Azimuth. Having more crew suffering the same fate had been a terrible blow. And then something far worse happened…

Drake and his crew had the chance to rescue a couple of hundred children the Dark Acolytes had kidnapped from ships and stations, often killing the children’s families in the process. Drake learnt from a captured Dark Acolyte the children were to be sacrificed and where the ceremony would take place.

When the Dagger arrived Drake found the children were held on board a huge ship which itself was at the centre of a hundreds-strong fleet. Added to that, the central ship had thousands of Acolytes on board, all vying to get as close as possible to the site of the sacrifice.

Getting anywhere near the children had seemed impossible. Even getting close enough to destroy the ship and kill the children, at least saving them from being lined up and sacrificed one after another, hadn’t seemed achievable.

That’s when the Azimuth had intervened, offering Drake a way to succeed. In that place, at that time, it could make use of the strange energies in the area to render the Acolytes on all the ships unconscious.

Drake had immediately been suspicious. He’d grilled the Azimuth, trying to uncover any downside but he’d found nothing. He discovered most of his crew would be knocked out too, only those whose souls were tied to the hellship would be immune, but none of his crew or the Acolytes would suffer or be harmed in the long term.

There’d been no choice. Drake accepted the offer and the Azimuth delivered on its side. Drake and his small group of still conscious crew conscious managed to reach the Acolyte ship and break in without facing any further threats.

They recovered the children, who were also unconscious, and started back to the Dagger. The Acolytes began stirring as Drake and his crew raced for the airlock, coming fully awake but able to muster little resistance as almost all of them had been in the sacrificial area.

Drake, his crew, and the children all made it back on board the Dagger. Drake raced to the bridge, ordering the Dagger to disengage and start fighting its way out even before he reached it.

Only then did the sting in the tail of the Azimuth’s help become clear. Drake had gone to great trouble to be sure his crew wouldn’t be harmed and they hadn’t been. Not by the Azimuth’s definition of harm at least. Drake saw things very differently. His crew, his entire crew, had been brought under the Azimuth’s control. Every single crew member was now tied to the Azimuth, and so to Drake.

The thing Drake had always feared even more than leading his crew to their deaths had come to pass and the Azimuth revelled in having out-thought Drake to achieve it. It might have to obey his orders but it still sought every opportunity to cause harm and mayhem.