Beaten and bruised, Karim stood at his station on the bridge, staring at his terminal. His eyes were locked firmly on where the mirage image of Aiden’s ship remained. It had left the system hours ago, but the shroud of light delay persisted as a rude monument to Karim’s present, and glaring failure.

  He had suffered personally. A gash across his right cheek struck a portion of his beard in two like a fissure in a deep forest, along with a couple broken ribs. Both were made more dangerous in the null gravity. The losses to The Third Fleet were more severe. He’d suffered losses before in his career, but nothing as humiliating and decisive as this.

  A few ships had suffered cosmetic damage and some minor exposure to space. Of the three that had been in the outer-wing of the formation during initial evasive manoeuvres, all were now dormant and drifting on a trajectory away from the rest of the fleet. His flagship however, The Kolkata, the prime jewel of his newly minted command, was barely limping along.

  The Relentless was another wound entirely. Caught in the initial rupture of the waystation upon the reveal of Aiden’s hidden weapon battery, it and its accompanying boarding craft were now a cloud of dust and splintered hull plating amongst the sea of shifting wreckage and the frames of halved freighters. Aiden had bested him and cost him one of the captains of the Third Fleet that had recently shown the most potential to be something other than a puppet of crooked der Waals and whatever agenda he was beholden to.

  Captain Kovarova Vermalen was gone, and with her her testimonial – the only thing thus far that might have stood a chance at holding der Waals accountable.

  Slowly, and as if from far away, Karim became aware that someone was trying to get his attention.

  “Admiral!” a nerve-wracked Corporal Chaasker howled, “Admiral Ashok!”

  Karim allowed the melancholic fog to subside long enough to hear her. Snapping to attention, he turned to meet her eyes with a wince of pain in his side.

  “Chaasker, report,” he said, not offering an excuse for his absentmindedness.

  “Sir, aftside decks forty-seven to fifty-two have suffered catastrophic loss of function, along with twenty-two personnel reported missing.”

  That sudden and incredible loss of life stung Karim more than his broken ribs could.

  “And propulsion? Can we get out of here?” Karim asked, dreading the response.

  “Negative, Admiral. Power distribution across the outer hull batteries has been disrupted and levels are diminished. We are also venting atmosphere. Crews in the outer decks are tending to the survivors in environment suits and rebreathers. We’re dead and drifting,” explained a harried Chaasker.

  All around Chaasker and the rest of the bridge, those crew that weren’t strapped into their stations were moving from terminal to terminal by pushing off with their feet and sailing in the null gravity as they coordinated rescue and recovery operations. It was only then that Karim noticed that his own feet were drifting away from the deck plating, and tapped a command on his terminal, activating in-built magnets that attracted his naval boots and tugged him back to the floor.

  “You said all power’s out? What of the battle generators?”

  “Still shut down but responsive. I can spin them up should we have a need,” Chaasker said.

  “Bring one to ten percent power; enough to get us moving,” Karim ordered and Chaasker nodded, tapping a command on her terminal. “What of The Yesteryear? Have a destroyer dispatched to run them down for questioning.”

  “I can’t sir, the emergency fleet systems are not responding and all ships are stuck on your last executive command. Every vessel is still slaved to the Kolkata.”

  “Damnit,” Karim spat, allowing a seldom shown side of himself to surface. “So we can’t run, can’t pursue. What can we do?”

  “We can get communications back up. I’ve got some techs on the outer-hull working on rerouting a few things.”

  As if on queue and as the bulletin network restored, a disgruntled der Waals and a concerned Bill Mostro popped into view on the nearest wallscreen.

  “Tell me you’re not dead over there,” der Waals said, forcing an eye-roll from Mostro.

  “How bad is it, Admiral?” prodded Mostro. “Can we dispatch assistance?”

  “Please,” Karim said, and explained the extent of the damage.

  “That Aiden really is a prick,” said der Waals, narrowing his eyes. “Though we should have seen that coming, given our history with him.”

  Karim nearly baulked, seeing as der Waals blatantly skirted the fact that his actions directly led to the consequences that had befell them. Though at some level, The Commodore had a point. Karim had fallen headlong for the pirate’s trap.

  “If you can, sir, detach The Mercurial from the slave protocol. We would be happy to run down the last of these remaining pirates,” Mostro offered.

  “I appreciate that, Bill, but we’ve locked ourselves in with the wasps. A software bug has made shutting off that protocol problematic.”

  “Sir, I could retask the ISI,” Chaasker said discreetly on a private bulletin. Karim sent back the go-ahead.

  “I have tasked The Kolkata’s Identification System Intelligence to hunt down a bugfix,” Karim explained to der Waals and Mostro.

  Der Waals narrowed his eyes. “I wasn’t aware that The Kolkata had an AI on board. Sitting idle all this time…”

  Karim knew the ISI’s existence wasn’t something he wanted to allude to so early, but it was a card he had to play. Whatever der Waals suspected now, however, was the least of his concern.

  “First and foremost, we have to get The Yesteryear. Without Bruin Backen, this whole exercise was folly,” Karim insisted.

  After several minutes, the ISI reported the detachment of several vessels within the fleet from the slave protocol. Of the handful of destroyers and battleships, only two stood out; The Emphatic, led by der Waals’ closest compatriot, Captain Fawes, and The Mercurial itself. Regardless, the ISI gave the all-clear.

  Karim didn’t have time to waste debating the suspicious nature surrounding these particular ship’s sudden freedom from the still otherwise firmly locked protocol. Instead, without hesitation he issued his orders.

  “Take a taskforce of The Emphatic and two destroyers and get underway immediately,” Karim said, “I expect their capture unharmed. Commodore, bring them to me.”

  Mostro nodded and left the bulletin, with only der Waals to stare him down from across the room. He paused only momentarily, the silence between them speaking volumes more than words could.

  “Agreed, Admiral. And we can discuss the oversight that led to the loss of The Relentless later,” said der Waals before closing the feed, leaving an expertly placed thorn in Karim’s side.

  In the interlude between The Relentless’ destruction and the weapon’s firing, to the dispatch of The Mercurial’s task force, The Yesteryear had moved to two light-hours distant. They had yet to open a hole to riftspace, meaning Bruin appeared to have been telling the truth about the damages they had suffered on their entry to Bedalajara.

  Karim surveyed the sleeping weapon battery where it drifted amongst the expanding remains of the waystation and The Relentless’ dust cloud. To see an artefact such as this under any other circumstance would be a wonder to behold. Now however, it hung as a grim spectre in the black of space waiting to reawaken and resume its carnage. The readings on Karim’s terminal spoke a different story. From what he could tell, the battery had used up all the energy it had in its stores. It would take a fleet’s power to recharge it, something Karim now suspected Aiden had been able to do ahead of the Third Fleet’s arrival.

  Being that the drives of The Mercurial and the fast moving destroyers were far more recent construction than the dated picketship, they tracked down and subdued The Yesteryear with little effort. From dispatch, to capture, to return, the task force’s roundtrip took just under three hours.

  During that time, Karim first paid a visit to the damaged levels of the ship, wanting to see the consequences of his mistakes with his own eyes. After enough time to internalise it, Karim met with Dr. Quichek to discuss the correlation of the ancient signal device and the weapon battery. He found Dr. Quichek in the same lab he’d left him days earlier. Though, as Karim approached, the man seemed to be letting frustration get the better of him as he batted the device like a macaque rapping a coconut.

  “Well, they’re both Sonne. I can say that for certain,” said Quichek upon noticing him, reaffirming Karim’s assumption.

  “Problems, Slavoi?” Karim asked, raising an eyebrow at the device on its side on the workbench.

  “The rift signal the device was emitting stopped in tandem with the Protectorate weapon battery discharge. It powered down following that,” explained Quichek. “Now I can’t get the damned thing to so much as wink.”

  “Do you know if there’s any relationship between this device and the weapon battery? Aside from them both having the same origin.”

  “It’s hard to say without getting an inside look at the signal that the device was dispatching, but now that we’ve encountered the weapon battery, I would have to guess that this is some sort of black box or tracking device,” said Quichek. “It’s possible that many of these such devices exist, and that those pirates repurposed them in order to track the movements of the Fleet.”

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  Karim sighed. If Quichek was right, then Karim had again played right into Aiden’s hand. His failings as Fleet Admiral were beginning to pile up.

  “And we’re sure it’s not still doing that?” Karim asked.

  “No. Well, maybe not,” said Quichek. “For now it’s dormant, but there’s no telling if it will flicker back to life again.”

  “Can we isolate it somehow?”

  “I’ll monitor it and place it in a rift jamming enclosure. A construction of my own design, the enclosure blasts an unhealthy level of rift-based interference at the device if it detects even a whiff of activity. For now, though, it will lie in wait.”

  Karim didn’t trust the man, being seemingly far too close to his work to see any problems on his periphery. But for now, with the device powered down and the fleet effectively crippled, he had far more important matters to deal with.

  “You’re aware of our current issue surrounding the locked slave protocol?” asked Karim, “Perhaps I should have your eyes on it as well, now that the mystery surrounding this device has reached its end.”

  Quichek paused and checked something on his terminal.

  “I would, Admiral, but there’s really no need,” Quichek said, gesturing for Karim to check his own terminal.

  Karim did, only to find that the ISI had only just isolated the problem and deployed a fix. The status indicator on his terminal now blinked an all-clear indicating that several more ships were now free of the protocol.

  Maddeningly, and after leaving Quichek, Chaasker sent him an exhausted sounding bulletin stating that many more ships remained stuck despite the ISI’s insistence that everything was okay.

  Those ships that were free were beginning to affect minor repairs to The Kolkata and the rest of the damaged vessels. Any major repairs, such as the missing decks, would have to wait for drydock. With the matter just outside of his ability to influence, he was tepidly delighted to see that The Mercurial had returned with The Yesteryear in tow, and with it two prisoners.

  So much had gone wrong with his first command that Karim momentarily contemplated scrubbing the mission right there and then. But, a familiar insistence tugged at him and he decided he might as well hear what Bruin Backen had to say first.

  The pirate captain seemed distressed more than nervous from behind the one-way mirror. Karim had had Bruin placed in an interrogation room alongside his mute compatriot Karl, for he saw little need in isolating a man who was already isolated in speaking.

  “He’s said nothing,” said der Waals over Karim’s shoulder. “At least the fool knows when to hold his tongue.”

  “I could say the same for the other gangly looking one, but he’s got no tongue to hold,” said Bill Mostro.

  Karim looked the men up and down from where they sat. Bruin Backen, with a dark complexion, black trimmed hair and sorrowful eyes, sat rigid with his head hung toward the table. Karl on the other hand, who had no surname on record to go on, sat upright and indignant. Karl’s eyes were affixed on the mirror across from him almost as if he were looking straight through it and into Karim’s eyes. On the table in front of Karl, he rested two arms of varied length, on which the absence of hands was unmistakable if not outright barbaric.

  “Do we have anything on these two– family records, vocation, anything?” Karim asked Chaasker.

  “Other than a failed attempt at a captainship licence on Turanda, Bruin Backen effectively doesn’t exist in Sovereignty space. We know even less about this Karl,” Chaasker explained.

  Karim considered that. Enigmas or not, these men knew something about where to find Aiden which he was determined to extract.

  “You’re a long way from Turanda, Bruin,” Karim said as he took a seat across from the men in the interrogation room. “I have to admit running a criminal enterprise using your real name is audacious.”

  Bruin sighed. “I like my name,” he said, raising his heavy head, “why would I use any other?”

  “Fair enough. Does Karl here have a full name?”

  Karl shook his head.

  “It’s just Karl,” Bruin said, “or at least he’s never shared it with me.”

  “What happened to your hands Karl?” Karim asked. Karl nodded, granting approval for Bruin to answer for him.

  “Same thing as with his tongue. Francis Aiden.”

  “Or Garfield Pates?” Karim posited.

  “I don’t know who that is,” said Bruin. “Aiden’s the one that runs things around here. Say the wrong thing, trust the wrong people, and well… Karl can attest to the consequences.”

  Karl chortled with a nod and tapped the metal table with the longer of his stub arms.

  “You don’t seem to like Aiden much,” Karim pointed out, “then why work with him?”

  Karl leaned and shouldered Bruin, shaking his head as he did. Karim looked them both over, knowing what that meant.

  “I see,” he said. “Is there anything you can share with me? Why was The Yesteryear in Bedalajara? Ever go as far as Lyonesse?”

  “We were here because of you, Admiral,” said Bruin, which earned a haughty look from Karl, “but not for the reasons you think. Had I known Aiden was going to unleash that weapon on you…”

  “You knew of the weapon’s existence beforehand. I thank you for your bulletin warning me,” Karim said, which received a raised eyebrow and a double-take from Karl. It was obvious to Karim that Bruin might’ve done that in secret. “But why not warn me of the explicit dangers?”

  “I tried several times, but any message with suspicious phrasing wouldn’t get past the automated scrubbers,” said Bruin, hanging his head again. “I didn’t want anyone to die.”

  “And yet you serve an outlaw like Aiden?”

  “He left us to die. I bet he believes you are torturing us by now– he knows we won’t tell you anything.”

  Karim looked at Karl. “I understand why he can’t, but what holds your tongue Bruin?”

  Bruin smirked at that. Karl rolled only his eyes.

  “He has something on you, doesn’t he?” Karim asked. He was beginning to think this underfoot feeling of guarded conversation mirrored that of his own captains.

  “I can’t say,” Bruin said, poorly masking his emotions.

  “Look, Bruin. We need to know where Aiden is. Name the system. Name the station.”

  “I’m sorry, Admiral.”

  “My engineers say The Yesteryear’s navigational data appears to have been wiped clean. They also tell me that the damage to your ship was not as extensive as you led off. You could have jumped to rift and fled this system when you had the chance,” Karim said, choosing to switch gears.

  Bruin considered that for a moment. “You seem like an honest Sovvo, not sure I could say the same about the other officers I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. I figured my fate was safer with you, than back with a man that left us to die. That said, trust that I really can’t tell you where he is.”

  Karim slowly nodded. He could see both Bruin and Karl had been made deliberately mute. The method inflicted on Karl was obvious. Bruin’s crux was more reclusive. For now though, Karim decided he better not push. Should he show these men a taste of mercy, maybe then they would open up to him.

  That’s when he received a bulletin from Quichek which opened on his terminal. Behind the Doctor stood Chaasker, both with jubilant grins masking mild alarm.

  “What is it?” Karim pressed.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Admiral,” said Chaasker, “but the device is awake. It’s started broadcasting again.”

  “And Dr. Quichek, is your jamming enclosure working? Can you turn off the device?” asked Karim, wary of Aiden or anyone else for that matter still having the ability of tracking the Fleet’s movements.

  “It is,” said Quichek, bluntly. “And quite well, might I add. What’s interesting is that the device’s resonant frequency has changed. Which is not something I expected. Though, due to the antiquated construction I admit that I should have anticipated this might be a possibility…”

  “Dr. Quichek, please cut to it.”

  “Right. I think shutting this off or otherwise disabling the device might be a mistake,” said Quichek, before a short breath. “So in modern rift technology, proper shielding is employed to isolate any vibration or emanation of rift in order to keep real space from prematurely or inadvertently dropping through into riftspace. It is a catastrophic mistake made thousands of times and consequently designed around. There is a problem however with older technology that has not been built with this revelation in mind.”

  “You’re saying the device is at risk of pulling The Kolkata into riftspace?”

  “No, at least not all of us. Any rift device would need to be proportionally larger to suck in any more than a few ship’s decks with it into rift. No, what I am trying to articulate is that the device has begun communicating in such a way as to be different from the signal we saw before. Something has changed.”

  “What does that mean– is it sending a new message to the weapon battery?”

  “That we have no way of knowing with access to the signal itself,” said Quichek, before pausing. Karim could see that the man wanted to ask something of him, but was hesitating. Overcoming himself, Quichek said, “If I could only get physical access to the weapon battery I might be able to learn–”

  “Admiral,” said Bruin, cutting off Quichek, who up until this point Karim had been so involved with the bulletin he had nearly forgotten was in the room. “If I may? I might have something that could be beneficial to us both.”

  “Who is that– what could he possibly–?” Quichek said. Karim raised a finger to silence him.

  “Go ahead, Bruin,” said Karim.

  “You said that Sonne device came from Bedalajra? As much as I wanted to take this to my grave… I was the stupid soul that reprogrammed that there device of yours, along with dozens more that Aiden scattered in across several systems that neighbour this one.”

  Karim’s eyebrows raised. On the bulletin, Dr. Quichek and Chaasker were taken aback.

  “I’m coming right down,” Quichek blurted out over the bulletin before turning to Chaasker, “Where is the interrogation level?”

  Karim terminated the bulletin, his attention solely trained on the forsaken pirate captain, now admitted agent of sabotage.

  “These are serious crimes you’re admitting to Bruin,” Karim warned. “That device alerted Aiden to our movements which directly led to the deaths of a good captain, and hundreds more aboard The Relentless.”

  “I know,” Bruin admitted, hanging his head. “I still can’t tell you where Aiden’s hiding, but if what your scientist says about the device is true and the device has changed frequencies, then maybe this can go a small way in alleviating my conscience.”

  “Very well,” Karim said, gesturing to the mirror window for a guard to let Quichek into the interrogation room, whose arrival was heralded by his boisterousness.

  Quichek entered, followed by Chaasker, and slammed the jamming enclosure onto the interrogation room table.

  “Hello to you too, mister?” asked Bruin.

  “Slavoi. Doctor Slavoi Quichek,” said Quichek.

  “And this is Corporal Chaasker,” Karim said, introducing her.

  “Well, Corporal, Doctor, you’ll have to take the device out of that box of yours,” explained Bruin. “And I’ll need a knife.”

  Quichek looked to Karim for permission. He nodded and Quichek hastily opened his makeshift techno-prison, turning the device out onto the table. Chaasker stepped forward and looked Bruin up and down before handing him a knife pulled from a sheath on her hip.

  Bruin took the knife, but was stopped by Karl laying one of his handless arms on his. On his face shone an expression of “are you sure?” to which Bruin nodded. Karl removed his objection and Bruin winced and plunged the tip of the knife into his forearm. Working the blade around carefully, Bruin was able to pry free a small square-shaped data chip.

  Chaasker took back her knife and handed him a bit of gause retrieved from an emergency first aid kit that was hung on the wall of the corridor outside.

  “Now,” Bruin said with a sigh of relief as the pain subsided, “a terminal, please. Any terminal will do.”

  “Here, use mine,” offered Quichek. “I keep mine partitioned from the Fleet network.”

  Bruin scanned the data chip with the terminal, pulling up a program on its screen. After tapping a few commands, Bruin sat back in his seat as if stumped.

  “What is it?” pressed Quichek, “have you found something?”

  “That’s weird. I can’t seem to identify the encryption on the signal. Whoever is sending this message, it isn’t me.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Karim, “I thought you said you could read this.”

  “If it was me or one of my people that was sending this message I would. But this signal does show a broadcast origin and isn’t coming from one of us, nor is it from anyone in the Sov.”

  Unceremonious as always, der Waals chose this moment to burst in, making his presence undeniable. Bruin looked up, and to Karim’s surprise, Bruin’s eyes widened in a way they hadn’t when either Dr Quichek, Chaasker, or himself had entered the room. Bruin knew him.

  “Can you tell where it’s coming from? Is it from Aiden’s hidden base?” spat der Waals?

  “No…” said Bruin, shaking his head, “... this can’t be right.”

  Karim took the terminal from him. On it was a map of The Hold Worlds showing all of the Sovereignty worlds and stations, along with much of the Herd Federation and Odeeni Sphere. In a vast black void near the middle, surrounded by no systems, no stations, nor wandering planets, nothing for several lightyears was a blinking dot.

  The blinking dot and its surrounding black were far outside the reach of any of the static rifts or really any world within the Sovereignty itself. But there it was, blinking out on the fringe.

  “What is this region?” said Karim, unfamiliar with that sector of space.

  “Could it be a lifeboat asking for aid?” asked Chaasker.

  “Or maybe another Sonne artefact?” pressed Quichek.

  “No, at least I can’t say for certain. But Admiral, from what the stories say… this–” said Bruin, in as exacting a tone as he could muster, “–this is Earth.”

  Everysekai

  by Bluesycobalt

  > Female Lead with cast of developed side-characters

  > A lot of poking at Isekai tropes

  > Rational and Underpowered Protagonist fighting for her life

  > 1500-2500 Word Chapters

  Updates daily at 7:10pm EST until Chapter 28, then M-thru-F releases.