Episode 2: Escape

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“They’re coming in from the Alpha Quarter!” cried a soldier running past Kale. He skidded to a halt near a similarly uniformed officer and came to a swift attention.

“The Alpha Quarter, my God. They must have already taken the docking bays.” The man was an aging commander with a full head of salt and pepper and sullen brown eyes set in a wrinkled latino face. Two silver stars decorated his shoulders, and he wore a patch on his left arm adorned with a stylized yellow star.

“Execute defense protocol Ghorma Seven. And find Corporal Robbins, we need to break through this damned jamming signal!”

“Sir!” acknowledged the soldier, before running back down the hallway.

Noticing Jacob, the commander gave him a surprised once-over. “And just what the hell are you still doing here?”

Feigning ignorance, Jacob stammered a stalled response. “Well, I, I don’t…” He’d been clever enough to leave some of his wounds unattended, so that his staged disorientation remained convincing.

The commander stalked over, scowling. “Goddamn scientists,” he murmured, and whipped out a handheld scanner. A beam of dull red light lashed out and entered Jacob’s pupils, then disappeared with a confirming trio of beeps from the handheld device. “You should have been evac’d with the rest of the team from MedLab Four.”

“I dunno, sir, I just…” Jacob reached up to gingerly touch his temple. “I think I hit my head.”

Meanwhile, the commander stood staring at the readout on his handheld device. He grew chillingly silent and set a pair of battle-hardened eyes on Jacob.

Jacob’s nerves were on edge. He hated not knowing who he was, but moreso, he hated not knowing where he fit into this game. Fine, he may be a lab rat, but he couldn’t just assume that these were the bad guys. Perhaps he had consented to the experiments, and just couldn’t remember it. Amnesia? The odd thing was, he knew about amnesia. He knew about it as if he were a master of human medicine. In most cases, the patient lost memory related to a specific period of time around a traumatic incident. Jacob had lost his whole life. Granted, this was a possibility with amnesia, but something about it felt… off. Disjointed and unnatural. He had to play this right, to gain as much information as possible.

“Uh, is there something wrong, sir?” He rubbed at his head and faked a good wince.

“We’ve gotta get you evac’d,” answered the commander. He reached out to grab Jacob forcefully by the arm and led him away down the corridor. “If the Colonel doesn’t get these Coalition vermin under control, he’s going to initiate General Order Thirteen.”

“Y… You mean he’s gonna…”

“Listen son, neither of us want our atoms vaped with the rest of Klius Station, so I suggest you get quiet and keep moving!”

Conceptual Image of Klius Station's Corridors

The commander led Jacob through a series of corridors, entering a keycode at every security hatch. Though other soldiers passed by, Jacob saw not one who resembled a civilian. Only soldiers. If this Klius Station served any purpose other than war, there was little to suggest what that was. Perhaps the other civilians had already been evacuated?

At long last, Jacob was led into a long room with a series of circular hatches. Through each he could see the lights and touchscreens of flight controls. Escape pods, beyond which he glimpsed the stars of outer space. He’d come to suspect that the facility was a space station. The existence of stellar lodging and travel was certainly familiar to him, but seeing it with his own eyes as if for the first time presented a rush of exhilarating wonder.

The commander waved a guardsman over. “I want this man evac’d to Jump Node five. This is an Alpha One Priority. Understood?”

The guardsman’s eyes got very big, and it took him a moment to reply. “Yes sir, understood sir!”

The commander put a steadying hand on the guardsman’s shoulder. “Pepper, is it? Listen, Pepper. You get this man safely to Earth and I will promise you a long, profitable career with the Legion’s finest.”

The brief silence was broken by a noise from behind. Half a second later, a tiny hole was ripped into the commander’s chest. He looked down at it with a scowl. “Son of a -”

The last word was cut off by a violent noise coming from inside that hole. The commander seized, eyes rolling back into his head, while arcs of electricity zapped about his neck and hands. Seconds later, he fell to the ground, flesh burnt and smoking.

Jacob hissed and backpedaled into the nearest wall. The guardsman drew his weapon and spun around to return fire. Taking aim at a ventilation shaft in the ceiling, he began shooting bursts of charged plasma from his weapon. Between the blasts, a shadowy figure dropped to the floor and crouched to absorb the fall before rolling to the side. The guardsman tried to track the shadowy figure, but the weapon suddenly went silent. He looked at it with frustration, and smacked the power cell casing angrily.

“Shouldn’t fire that fast, you’ll overcook the power cell.”

The guardsman looked back at the attacker, horrified. The weapon in his hand suddenly turned white hot and began to disintegrate. It took the screaming guardsman with him, dissolving his hand, then his arm, then the rest of him in a flash.

“Green-toothed phlegm-head.” The attacker had a roguish look and an accent that reeked of swearing colony types; those kind of roughnecks who work on fringe world colonies and breathe too much ionized gas. He walked over to a pile of ash left behind, smirking. “Should’a thrown the dumb thing at me, then it’d a’ been a fair fight.”

Jacob didn’t say a word. No longer feeling it necessary to fake his disorientation, he stood and watched this attacker with trepidation. He wasn’t wearing much of a uniform, more of a jumpsuit without markings of any significance aside from pouches stuffed with ammunition and a dastardly weapon in his hand.

The attacker turned and eyeballed Jacob, holstered his weapon, and opened a toothy smirk. “You must be pretty damn important, huh? Alpha One Priority?” He repeated the words mockingly. “Shit smells worse than my gramma’s chicken liver. Don’t tell me! You’re some kinda remote control bomb waitin’ to vape me and this half of the funny farm.”

“You’re Coalition, aren’t you,” answered Jacob, recalling what the dead commander had mentioned about the attackers. “How can I trust you?”

“Trust me?” he cried. “What the hell do you MDC rabbits know ’bout trust?” He scoffed, and approached Jacob with vengeance. “I’ll tell ya ’bout trust.” Out came the gun, and its hot barrel touched Jacob’s neck. He glowered at Jacob with a type of anger that comes only from the heart of a battle-stained soldier. “You can trust that after I pull this trigger, your hairless soul’s gonna burn for seventeen generations in the pits of hell.”

Jacob met his opponent’s angry eyes unflinching. He knew exactly how and where to swipe his hand so that the weapon would be safely redirected. He knew exactly which martial techniques would stun, overtake, and kill his opponent. It would take three quick motions and would last approximately 1.5 standard seconds. Jacob could tell by the dilation of his pupils and the pulsing of a vein in his neck just how much poison his amygdala was pumping into those veins.

Instead, Jacob replied with a cool and emotionless plea. “Please don’t kill me.”

The skin around the Coalition soldier’s eyes shrunk in response, confused by the irony of such words spoken without fear or pleading.

“Take me prisoner and leave. The commander of this space station is going to initiate General Order Thirteen, and I’d quite prefer not to have my atoms vaped with the rest of Klius Station.” Jacob found a touch of humor at quoting the dead chap nearby, but he didn’t let it show.

“All right, fair enough.” The attacker dropped his gun, grabbed Jacob by the arm, and turned him toward the open door. “You gonna play nice, rabbit?”

“Of course. I want to get out of here just as much as you.”

“Riiiight,” he drawled.

“My name is Jacob, Jacob Kale.”

“That’s nice, Jakey. You can call me Riles. Now that we’ve made acquaintances, you just shut up an’ keep movin’. You can suck ma’ dick when we get back to the ship!”

Riles was crafty. He’d clearly studied the layout of this station, for he seemed to know where to turn and what ‘enemy’ soldiers to expect. Jacob played along with all of Riles’ directions. Only twice did Riles have to use his dastardly weapon, the rest he’d avoided with clever redirections down side hallways or into abandoned rooms. Eventually they reached a large set of vacuum doors that lead into the station’s docking bays.

“Alright, rabbit, man up. This is gonna be hot.”

Riles had somehow gained access codes for the station’s security keypads. When he keyed open the doors, Jacob discovered where all of the racket was coming from. The docking bays were huge, taking up almost half of the station’s Beta Quarter. The far end opened straight into space, protected by an invisible magnetic force field. It was a maelstrom of violence. Plasma bolts, bullets, mortars, and the like were being thrown back and forth between a line of soldiers wearing the Yellow Star patches and unmarked soldiers like Riles, who were defending the spacecraft they’d come in.

It was now or never. Jacob could break for it and try to escape with the Yellow Star soldiers before the station went nuclear, or he could go along with Riles and the other Coalition attackers. When Riles started kicking, punching, and shooting his way through the station’s soldiers, Jacob made a snap decision and followed.

Combat came naturally to Jacob, feeling like some kind of innate skill. Was he using jujitsu or kung fu? Conscious thought wasn’t directing his actions. One by one, without any weapon aside from the tools of his body, Jacob dispatched the soldiers he encountered with the utmost efficiency.

“Sweet Jesus, Kale!” Riles shouted through the din of combat. “Leave some for me, will ya?”

They’d almost reached the boarding ramp of a Coalition vessel. Outside, another departing vessel was shot by a powerful laser on Klius Station’s defense grid, and exploded in fury. While the flames were deflected by the magnetic field, the wreckage and shrapnel, propelled at violent speeds, passed right through the field, causing it to shimmer gold and silver.

“Watch it!” cried Riles. He grabbed Jacob and tossed him up the boarding ramp and out of harm’s way, taking a few hits of shrapnel as he followed. Grabbing a comm device on his shoulder, Riles shouted, “Cappy, it’s Riles.” He slammed his fist on a large button that triggered the hydraulics to close the ramp. “You got your lady hot n’ ready?”

A voice spoke from the comm. “She’s ready. Dustoff in fifteen.”

The boarding ramp sealed itself, muting the noise from outside. Jacob’s ears were instead filled with the loud, reverberating rumble of the vessel’s core engine as it powered up.

“Riles. I can operate defense weapons.”

Riles turned to Jacob, smirking. “I’m sure ya’ can, snot junkie.” He clapped Jacob’s shoulder while his toothy smirk turned into a sneer. “But you’re my prisoner, remember? Strap yourself in, this’s gonna be bumpy.”

Riles gave Jacob a good shove toward the entry corridor, along which there were a number of crude passenger chairs. Sighing, Jacob sat down and pulled a protective harness over his chest and around his waist. Not long after Riles’ disappearance down the corridor, the vessel lurched off the platform and into the fray.

*    *    *    *    *

Danny Riles, a Coalition Marine.

“Why did you do it?”

“Opportunity knocks, Cappy.”

“He’s one of them.”

“Maybe.”

“Just what is that supposed to mean?”

Riles looked at Captain Metler from across the small table where the meager command crew would often eat meals together. There were too many things on the Captain’s mind these days. Riles could read it, not only in the way that cigarette dangled from the Captain’s fingers, or his recent love of whiskey. He could see it mostly in the Captain’s eyes, especially as they reared accusingly at Riles.

“Listen, Cappy. I know where you’re goin’ here. Gotta follow protocol. No prisoners off the field.” There was a pause, for Riles knew that what he was about to say could get him into a heap of trouble. “But… there’s somethin’ about this guy. I dunno what it is, but I really think -”

“No. Absolutely not,” interrupted Metler. “I know where you’re going with this, Riles, and I won’t sign off on it.”

Riles glared at Metler for a moment, then lifted his brow in mock concession. “Fair enough.” He scooted his chair noisily across the deck and started to stand. “I’m just sayin’, Cappy, the fella’ was gettin’ boosted off that station by some bozo Lieutenant on an Alpha One Priority, but if you want to snuff ‘im and blow ‘im out the airlock, it’s fine by me.”

“Sit down.”

Midway through standing, Riles looked back at the Captain speculatively.

“I said,” Metler paused, pointing his finger at the chair Riles had vacated, “sit down.”

Riles sat down as ordered. He was a brash twenty-something who had indeed grown up in the colonies. The Aleno Colony, to be precise, which was a harsh moon orbiting Tekran Four in the Tekran system. The Aleno Colony had been undergoing terraforming for the past twenty five years, and Riles hadn’t breathed real, natural air until he’d visited Animus IV.

Animus IV was one of the last colonies in the known galaxy that was free of the Civil Triumvirate’s oppression.  It was also home to the Freedom Coalition. Riles had gone there at seventeen to enlist in the Coalition Marine Corps. His physical and mental aptitude tests were so impressive that the Colonial Marine Corps’ 3rd Spaceborne Division recruited him for their EVA Combat Unit, and he’d spent the next three years after basic training learning everything the corps could teach him about zero-g combat. He was assigned to the Lilith’s Omen after fighting in the Centauri War.

The war had left Daniel Riles with marked, scarred features, most of which he kept concealed by an unshaven face. As he sat, Captain Metler eyed him with a gaze that might make a boxer uncomfortable. He was taller, balding, and wielded a personality that not only demanded respect, but earned it by respecting those who were brave enough to serve with him.

A sigh came from the Captain that broke a tense silence. “An Alpha One Priority is nothing to take lightly. I trust your gut just about as much as you trust your own, Riles, but this is something else. Now you know what kind of trouble we’ll get in if we end up bringing some LOPO snoop back to Animus IV. Hell, forget the trouble, we’d be puttin’ the entire Coalition in danger.”

“I know, Cap’.” Riles had settled down. The brevity of the whole scenario wasn’t lost on him, but the thrill of battle had always put him in a state that lingered somewhere between rowdy and collected. “Just talk to him.”

The Captain considered it for a moment, then ashed his cigarette and motioned for Riles to go. “Alright, bring him here.”

*    *    *    *    *

Jacob took a brief glimpse about the room before sitting down across from Captain Metler. This certainly was a vessel of war. Bland metallic walls, dirtied with years of neglect, and a utilitarian deck with the occasional stain here and there. The food preparation units scattered about were at least two decades old, he guessed, but he wondered what crummy military rations might taste like. He couldn’t remember the taste of food at all. Riles had brought him into this room, and there was a woman here. Come to think of it, he couldn’t recall having ever seen green eyes.

“What are you doing on my ship?”

Jacob looked away from the green eyes and settled for those of Captain Metler. “Hello, my name is Jacob Kale.”

“I don’t give a fuck what your name is. I want to know why I shouldn’t have you blown out of my airlock for treason against humanity.”

The way Metler’s anger was tempered into such refined control actually gave Jacob pause. Still, the dialogue of these people was painting an interesting picture for Jacob. He glanced from Metler’s eyes to the fresh cigarette in his hand, and finally to the nearly empty glass of whiskey sitting on his side of the table. A small grin cracked on his face, and he shook his head. “If you’re going to make threats like that, you should respect me enough to give a proper introduction.” His looked back into Metler’s eyes, meeting that challenging stare with one of his own. “That way I’ll have something to think about while I freeze.”

The skin tightened around Metler’s eyes in response to the retort. “Fine.” He puffed on his cigarette, then let it rest in a nearby ashtray. “I’m Alan Metler, Captain of the C.S.C. Lilith’s Omen.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Captain.”

“What are you doing on my ship, Jacob?”

Jacob leaned back and crossed his arms. “Well, I suppose it was better than staying.”

“I don’t have to put up with this.” Metler had had enough. “Riles, get him off my ship!”

Instead, Riles slapped a small surveillance device onto the table. The voices were strikingly familiar to Jacob – given how few voices he could remember hearing.

“I want this man evac’d to Jump Node five. This is an Alpha One Priority. Understood?”

“Yes sir, understood sir!”

“Pepper, is it? Listen, Pepper. You get this man safely to Earth and I will promise you a long, profitable career with the Legion’s finest.”

A scuttling noise, the sound of Riles grunting, then the sound of a weapon being discharged.

“Son of a-”

Riles shut off the device, left it on the table, and took a step back with his arms folded across his chest. A hush fell on the room beneath the throbbing of the Omen‘s engines, broken by the clinking rocks in Metler’s whiskey as he set the glass back on the table, and the quiet, calmed drone of his voice. “Alright, Jacob. Tell me what makes you so important to the Triumvirate.”

Jacob leaned his elbows onto the table, broke eye contact, and stared at the recording device left behind. “I was actually hoping you might tell me, Captain. I woke up in a test tube. Naked. No memory of who I am, where I came from. Apparently the lab techs thought to abandon me there, because the facility was empty when I woke up. So, I broke out, found this…” He tugged at the corners of the lab coat he’d taken. “And a medical chart with the name ‘Jacob Kale’. I couldn’t even tell you if that’s my real name.”

“That sounds awfully convenient.”

It was the woman’s voice. A beautiful, silken voice that sent a shiver down his spine. Suddenly, he wasn’t sure that this was amnesia. Surely he’d heard a woman’s voice before, but this felt oddly like that of a child first discovering the beauty of a woman. He glanced at her for a moment, back to the table, to her, then back to the Captain.

“Go on,” said Mettler.

Jacob thought through what he’d say next. “Look. All I know is what I know, and I seem to know quite a bit.” He tapped the table, indicating the surveillance device left by Riles. “Marso-Deka Corp. Antres-model surveillance unit, mark four.” He gestured about, indicating the ship as a whole. “Class-Three Corvette. Stock design had triple magna-thrusters at flux level 35g, dual ion thrusters for gravwell and atmospheric flight. Twenty maneuvering thrusters, class two particle shielding, gilite-enforced titanium hull, four guided P.C.B. turrets, foreward facing defensive laser, max payload of two-thousand -”

Captain Metler tried to interrupt. “We get it -”

“- constructed 2165, twenty-six years before these craft were outlawed by the government. Really, Captain, you could do better -”

“We get it!“

The room stilled at the Captain’s loud voice. It was Riles who broke the silence.

“All right, that’s it. We space ‘im.” Riles walked over to Jacob, and grabbed him by the shoulder. “No hard feelings.”

Without warning, Jacob swept his legs, using the table for balance. Riles yelled angrily while losing his footing, but Jacob Kale was too fast for any of them. Before the others could draw their weapons, Jacob had Riles on the deck in a chokehold, with his own gun aimed at his temple.

“Take it easy, Jacob,” said the woman.

“Drop… the weapons,” demanded Jacob in a cool voice. His eyes darted from one to the other. “Slowly.”

Captain Metler and his companion were halfway through lowering their guns when another voice crackled over an intercom. “Captain. We have incoming!”

Metler’s eyes grew silently desperate. He looked hesitantly at Jacob, who nodded slow consent. Keeping his wary eyes on Jacob, he turned his head ever so slightly toward the intercom. “How many?”

“Two attack cruisers, standard fighter escort.”

“Go on. Both of you.” Jacob nodded to the woman. “You two, sweetheart. Get moving.”

“Riles…”

“Shut up!” Jacob tightened his choke hold, and Riles’ face started to grow puffy and red. “Get moving!”

Once Captain Metler and the woman were gone, Jacob hefted Riles to his feet. “I have the knife you keep in your bootleg too, Riles. No tricks. Take me to those turrets, or I’ll blow a hole through your face. You get me?”

“I get you,” croaked Riles.

Jacob released him, and pushed him onward with the barrel of his own gun. “Get moving!”