Hellfire - Autonomy

Chapter 2-2

Once he’d finished eating Drake contacted Sonia and asked her to come down. She arrived a couple of minutes later.

“That hour passed quickly, Captain!” she said as she entered the room.

Drake winced. “I deserved that. Sorry, so much has happened so quickly I felt overwhelmed by it all and we’re nowhere near out of the woods yet. I just needed a little time to sort my head.”

She stared hard at him for a few moments, then sighed.

“Fair enough, Captain. You’re no more perfect than the rest of us and I’ve certainly had my moments of being grouchy with the crew. So does this mean I get to find out just what the hell happened back there?”

“It does. Take a seat and I’ll explain.”

“This I have got to hear!”

She pulled out a chair and sat down, staring expectantly at Drake.

“Well,” Drake said. “The short explanation is the Commander left behind one of his toys and I made use of it.”

“And the long explanation?”

“Right at the end the Commander was toying with a device, telling me he could use it to knock out the whole crew if he set the range to be short and he’d be safe as he was the one holding it.

“Then he said it could even knock out the crews of dozens of ships if it was set to long range. I think he was considering using it on all of us. He was a long way from rational at that point so it’s hard to be sure.

“I didn’t know if he was right about it but I didn’t want to find out the hard way. I taunted him, goaded him. It worked a bit too well. He dropped the device and attacked me. That ended with me killing him.

“Once he was gone I didn’t think it was safe to destroy the device without knowing how it worked or to leave it where others might stumble across it, so I put it to one side.”

“Then when we were facing certain defeat from the Acolytes you saw a reason to risk using it?”

“Yes. I had no idea whether it would work or even if it was set properly. There was a risk I might end up just knocking out everyone on our ship except myself. Even if I got the settings right I didn’t know whether it would be powerful enough to affect those on hundreds of ships rather than a dozen. Having them clumped so closely together gave me hope it would but I didn’t know.”

“And you didn’t think of telling any of us?” asked Sonia.

“I wasn’t completely sure I was going to use it. And I wasn’t sure it was going to work. Can you imagine the impact on the crew if they’d been told we had a way to avoid almost certain death and then it hadn’t panned out?”

“Yeah. You’re right. I would have liked to have known but I can see what you mean.” Her eyes narrowed a little. “I don’t remember you having any unusual devices with you though.”

“It was small. Barely the size of my thumb.”

“Was?”

“Yes, was. It crumbled into nothingness when I activated it. I don’t know if it was supposed to do that or whether I’d used it on too many ships and people and broke it. It’s a shame, it would have been a useful card to keep up our sleeve.”

“No kidding! So how comes most of our crew were knocked out but not all of them? It’s not like it was just those closest to you that didn’t end up unconscious.”

Damn but Sonia was sharp. Normally that was a good thing but right now it was really making Drake work hard.

“That I don’t know. From what the Commander had said about using it on the wider setting I thought most everyone on the Dagger would be fine. When most of you collapsed like that it scared the s**t out of me.

“Only Jensen and I were awake on the bridge. Until reports came in from the other crew who were still conscious I thought I’d miscalculated badly. Even then there were so few of us that the rescue was bloody hard work.”

Sonia shook her head.

“How did our lives become so damn complicated, Captain? Devices like that, Dark Acolytes meeting up in deep space, that weird crystal you managed to retrieve and all the crap the Commander pulled. I miss the simple days!”

“You mean the simple days of hunting down hellships which had enslaved the souls of their crews? Simple like that?”

“Yeah… I really do. Stars! Life is strange sometimes.”

“You won’t get any argument from me there!”

“So what’s the plan now?”

“Short term, we get those kids offloaded somewhere safe. The troopers are doing a good job of keeping the kids at least stable, which is pretty good going considering what they’ve been through, but this ship isn’t the right place for them to recover.”

“And then?”

“I’m still working on that. The Crimson Dragon is still after us and so is the Phoenix Conglomerate. Neither of them are likely to give up easily and I’m starting to wonder if anyone else is seeking us out too. For the moment I think we need to keep on the move, especially now we have the crystal they seem to be after.”

“I’d say give it to them and let them fight it out, but I don’t exactly want either of those to be given more power than they already have.”

“Exactly! I’d consider getting rid of it but even if we proved we’d destroyed it they’d still come after us to get everything we know.”

“You know it’s a shame those Acolyte ships all destroyed themselves instead of carrying on following your instructions. We could have used them as our own armada.”

Drake froze for a moment as ice poured down his veins. He shook his head sharply.

“Don’t even joke about that! Dark Acolytes doing what we wanted and fighting for us? It doesn’t bear thinking about!”

“No. You’re right, Captain! I guess it’s for the best they destroyed themselves.”

“Especially considering what they were planning to do to the children and what they hoped to get out of it. Their dying was definitely for the best.”

Sonia looked at him strangely.

“What did they want to get out of it, Captain? And how do you know what they wanted?”

“They wanted power. You could tell by how they lined up their ships and then themselves. I don’t know what form that power would have taken, but that’s the only reason I can see for them behaving the way they were.”

“Ah, okay. I see what you mean.”

Drake cursed himself inwardly. Sonia was too perceptive! She was picking up on every weakness in his story. He was going to have to be careful. He knew he needed a distraction and when he checked the time he found one.

“We’re only about ten minutes from the next jump point,” he said. “You handle this one. I’ll be ready to come up if we run into any trouble, otherwise I need a bit longer to think through what we’re going to do and where we’re going to go.”

“Aye, Captain. Any problems and I’ll shout. Loudly!”

“Thanks Sonia.”

She left the cabin to head for the bridge. Drake sat there thinking, but not about what to do next. His thoughts kept going to how he could avoid making Sonia any more suspicious about recent events… and he wasn’t coming up with any ideas!