27
Liam continued up the ship’s ramp, which began to close when he reached the top. The crew stood around the cargo hold waiting for the hatch to close. Upon hearing the satisfying clanks of the airlock clamping shut, Nix flipped a switch on the wall and the atmosphere of the cargo hold changed. Oxygen and Nitrogen poured through the vents overhead until they reached levels on par with Garuda.
When the indicator next to the switch turned green, Nix turned the handle downward once more, removing his mask to test the air with a long whiff. When he seemed alright the rest of the crew followed suit. Liam found it hard to place his trust in technology with which he was unfamiliar. Then again, it wasn’t as though he had much choice in the matter. All of the technology in this new part of the galaxy was unfamiliar to him. He kept coming back in his mind to the purple energy of the spires. What drove it? How did it work?
Liam started undoing the chin strap of his mask. Nix kept surprising him with his wit. He wondered how many more tricks Nix had up his sleeve. Liam was determined to get answers one way or another. Nix may have proven himself a friend, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have some things to explain.
“When were you going to tell us this ship was voice automated?” Liam asked Nix after removing his mask.
Nix appeared to be in deep thought for a moment, before replying with a shrug, “When it became relevant.”
Liam and Nix stared at each other for a several seconds. Finally, Liam cracked a smile and patted the Dinari on his shoulder.
“Did you see his face?” Liam asked with a broad smile.
Nix turned giddy at Xara’s mention. Liam had never seen so much emotion cross his face. For once, there seemed to be parity between customs. Across a galaxy and across species, Liam guessed some things were just funny anywhere.
Nix gushed, “I thought I’d made him mad the last time, but this? Zega’s going to die when he hears!”
Saturn uncrossed her arms and strode past them toward the cockpit, brushing Liam’s arm as she did. “Children.”
Ju-Long rolled his eyes and followed her. Though he seemed to be playing it cool, Liam thought he heard Ju-Long mumble, “That was pretty funny.”
Liam and Nix continued to recount their harrowing escape as they made their way to the front of the ship. Nix entered the cockpit last and sat in the seat farthest back, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back in the chair. “Liam, why don’t you take a crack at it?”
Liam examined the foreign buttons and switches on the console. Unlike most spaceships from Earth, a lot of the controls were manual switches rather than touchscreens or holographic projections. Many of the switches were old with bits of copper showing through the tarnish. Most were labeled with a foreign script that made sense to him the more he looked at it. He took a seat in the pilot’s chair and placed his hands on the console, running them along the smooth metal to get a feel for the vessel.
“Are you sure you want to fly this piece of junk?” Saturn asked.
Liam responded by putting his arm through the loop of metal on the console and grabbing the handle on the other side. The circular rung tightened around his forearm. Saturn quickly found her seat and strapped herself in, ever uneasy when Liam flew. Liam flipped three manual switches to his left out of instinct and hovered his free hand over the accelerator. “Hold on.”
“I don’t know if it’ll help,” Saturn jeered.
Liam tilted his forearm up and the ship took off from the ground, a few meters at first, and then accelerating up over the jagged landscape. As he turned the ship he looked out the cockpit window and saw Xara standing there, bellowing a cry that couldn’t pierce the noise of the engines. Liam imagined it was enough to shake the surface.
“Watch the rocks,” Ju-Long said, pointing to their left out the cockpit window.
“What are you doing?” Saturn scolded him. “Strap in, you fool.”
Ju-Long seemed to snap back to the moment and tried to make it to his seat, but a sudden updraft forced him to the ground. Liam couldn’t help but think Ju-Long was bad at this whole flying thing. Nix sat behind him silently, utterly confident in Liam’s abilities as a pilot. That was either encouraging or remarkably foolish of him. Nix didn’t know his track record. Liam had been called reckless on more than one occasion.
Liam tilted the nose of the ship upward and punched the accelerator. They sped over the top of the gigantic serrated rocks, leaving behind the cold dead surface. The ship gained altitude until they broke through the outer reaches of the thin atmosphere. Once the ship breached the threshold, Liam redirected the ship to Garuda’s surface. Liam instinctively pressed a few switches and toggled a circular knob to the left of the accelerator, adjusting their velocity to match the spin of the planet ahead so they would reach their target at their intended time.
The ship seemed to know what he wanted before he pressed the buttons. Liam wondered if the ship would have performed those tasks even if he hadn’t pressed anything. Was Nix playing him? The ship seemed aware somehow. It was too responsive to his will.
“How’s she handle?” Nix asked.
Liam turned and regarded him, pressing a button to hold the course and slipping his arm out of the loop at the same time. “It’s more responsive than I would’ve imagined. Are there more ships like this on Garuda?”
Nix dropped his gaze. “Once. But that was a long time ago. As far as I know, she’s the last of her kind.”
“The last?” Ju-Long asked. “What happened to the others?”
Nix’s eyes closed as though he was remembering back to another time. “War. The War of a Thousand Years, to be exact.”
“Just how old is this thing?”
“She’s seen her share of battles. And it prefers to be called ‘She.’”
“Prefers?” Liam asked.
Nix appeared to get a little worked up, defending what he considered his friend. “She has seen countless battles and endured them all. She is the pride of the once feared Dinari fleet.”
“Does ‘She’ have a name?” Saturn probed.
Nix seemed to deflate a little, coming back into the moment. “Yes, but that kind of information is...privileged.”
Nix read Liam’s questioning gaze and continued, “She had a bit of a reputation during the war. If the Ansarans realized this was that vessel they would bring their entire fleet down on her. In the ten years since the war’s end, the stories have begun to fade as fewer Dinari remember the war. It pains me that the Dinari have so quickly become complacent under a rule that does not benefit them.”
Ju-Long scratched his head, ruffling his short black hair in the process. “Ragnar made it sound like the relationship between the Ansarans and Dinari had always been this way.”
“The victors write the history books. The War of a Thousand Years had been fizzling out for decades before I was born. Colony after colony fell until the Ansarans ruled it all. In colonies like Garuda the reeducation began when I was a child. It was only through my relationship with Zega that I learned the truth.”
“Where does this ship come into play?” Liam asked.
Nix hesitated. Liam sensed he’d touched a nerve. The information Nix had given him was purposely vague. Liam got the feeling they still weren’t trusted. After everything Liam and the crew had been through since passing through the wormhole, he wasn’t surprised trust had to be earned. Already he’d seen at least as much betrayal in this part of the galaxy as he’d seen on Earth.
Nix chose his words carefully as he spoke. “The Dinari held their own for centuries, controlling several worlds and keeping the Ansarans and, to a lesser extent, the Kraven at bay. There was an escalation of arms as the Ansarans brokered a shaky alliance with the Kraven to share technology and defeat a common enemy. The Dinari had no choice but to escalate as well.
“This ship, and nearly a hundred like it, were the result. The Kraven attacked first and were defeated handily. They retreated to their home world where they stewed in silence
for generations, their pitiful alliance with the Ansarans broken. But the Dinari commanders got greedy, and decided that instead of waiting for the Ansarans to attack one of their colonies, they would strike at the head of the beast. The fleet was sent to Ansara.”
“The battle was said to be like nothing seen in this system before or since. The azure sky of Ansara burned red. Countless millions turned to ash. The Dinari thought we were winning, but it was a farce. The Ansarans had a fleet that dwarfed our own, hiding around the many moons of our Mother World. When they attacked, our fleet was decimated. A handful of ships were able to get away, though the records do not reflect how. After that, the war was theirs, with only the occasional skirmish fueling the war. Time seemed to have lost track of the other ships until only this one remained.
Liam tried to understand how so much stock could be placed in a single ship. If a hundred could not destroy the enemy fleet, what use was one ship? She was fast and had performed admirably thus far, but she hardly seemed noteworthy as vessels went. “You hide a ship that important in the middle of the colony? Surely the Ansarans would figure it out?”
“Her reputation is based mostly on rumors. The shape of the ship itself is pretty typical of many Dinari vessels, save for a few additions.”
Saturn crossed her arms and asked, “What makes this ship so different, then? Why would the Ansarans fear it if they beat a fleet of them?”
A red indicator light started to blink on the control console before Nix could answer. Nix uncrossed his legs and stood, making his way across the cockpit until he could lean over the console. “Incoming message. It’s Zega’s frequency.”