Episode 24: Sea of the Red Star
"Sire, the fleet! They are about to be attacked!" Celestella exclaimed.
The Leader said nothing. Instead he simply watched as the Eratite ship shot through Gantz's defenses and ran for open space.
"Is there some particular reason you are so concerned for Gantz's wellbeing?" Leader Desslok asked, not bothering to look at his aide.
"N - no, Sire. I simply don't wish for our forces to suffer any unnecessary losses." Celestella replied, trying to still the pounding of her anxious heart.
"We need not fear that fate." The Leader replied quietly, then added, "Summon my council. I wish them to see what is in store for this cursed vessel."
"You… wish them to come… here?" she asked, a bit nervous.
"Do not worry too much, Celestella. I will not be revealing my source for what they see before them. There is yet to come much that even you do not know." The Leader finally turned to face her, a look of odd anticipation on his face. "I hadn't thought I would see the ill fate I have prepared for the Eratite ship, but now, we all shall see it."
In that instant Desslok reminded her very much of the Malha. Rather appropriate though, she thought. Some things, such as a foul temper, seemed to run in this particular family's blood. She had learned not to wonder what the Leader was thinking anymore. When he first took the throne she had spent countless hours trying to understand how he thought, but after months of trying, she still didn't have a fundamental understanding of this odd man's mind. Sometimes she shuddered to think what he must know of her. He seemed at times not to know about her and Mirenel's affiliation with the zealots – or Deun – but then there were the moments that he looked at her with eyes that seemed to bore into her soul, and in those moments she was sure that he knew everything.
With an imperceptible shiver she nodded, "Yes, Leader Desslok." Celestella bowed to the man, then left to retrieve the rest of the council.
The Argo sailed on through space, the asteroids and the enemy fleet now behind them, but the odds were that the fleet was following them, even if they were out of sensor range. The whole crew sensed it – that something was coming after them.
A feeling of relief had settled on many of the bridge crew, knowing that they'd weathered an enemy attacked and come out none the worse for wear, but at the same time, they knew that haste was of the utmost importance. They had to either lose their pursuers, or find a defensible position that would let them fight off this Gamilon fleet once and for all.
They had warped several times and were nearing a star. The radar was clear as they waited to pass the star before they warped again.
The bridge crew were preparing for the next jump when the alarm on the radar sounded.
"Captain! Unidentified mass approaching from the stern." Nova said, adjusting the radar, trying to figure out exactly what they were looking at. "I'm not sure what it is. It's almost like a giant organism of some kind."
"Sandor, any data on the sensors?" Asked the captain.
"Nothing definite, just that it's some sort of gas, though it's much more substantial than any gas I've ever seen." Sandor replied, staring intently at the screen in front of him.
"Is it a threat?" Avatar asked.
"There's no way to know from the data." Sandor replied.
"I can't tell anything either." Nova said.
"Jettison a probe." The captain ordered. "Let's see what we're dealing with."
The probe was ordered and sent out. Within a minute it was swallowed by the gas.
"I've lost telemetry from the probe." Sandor announced an instant after the gas enveloped the probe; he stared at the screen for a few seconds, "Captain, we have to get out of here, now. That gas just ate our probe whole. There's nothing left of it."
"Venture, get us out of here."
"Captain, we can't warp yet, the engine hasn't recovered enough to handle that." Orion said.
Avatar nodded to the old engineer. "I know." He looked back at Venture, "Take us past the star as fast as you can."
Venture moved to head the ship out of the area at top speed.
"Wait! Captain, enemy ships just coming out of warp to port. They're moving to cut off our escape." Nova felt her stomach tighten.
"Venture, can we make it out before they trap us here?" Avatar asked.
Mark stared at the data he'd been sent by the radar and science computers. He felt his heart start to pound. "No, Captain. We can't. They're moving too quickly." He shook his head and whispered, "They knew where we'd be – somehow."
"Take us in, Venture." Avatar said solemnly.
"In where?"
"Toward the star."
Venture swallowed hard and obeyed.
"So it begins." Leader Desslok smirked as he watched Gantz's ships corner the Eratites between the star and the creature pursuing them.
The council all stood watching the scene. The looks on their faces were mixed. Desslok watched each one as they saw the Eratite ship – something none of them had seen before.
The most startled face was Elisa's. Desslok watched as her hand flew to her mouth when the ship started towards the star. Then he turned his gaze to Celestella and nearly laughed when he saw her trying to hide the look of anxiety on her face.
Many of the rest of the attendees were trying to hide what they thought of the display.
Desslok knew that many of them didn't approve of this, but also knew that they wouldn't publically protest. They knew that, should this ship reach it's goal, that their chances of finding a place for their people to go were gone. Though some would be willing to die, none were willing to let their loved ones die because of their decisions. He had chosen his council well. All of them stood to lose too much should this ship succeed.
"What do you see?" the Leader's voice echoed through the silent room.
There was no response.
"You see nothing?" he asked ominously.
All eyes pried themselves away from the ship and turned to the Leader in dread.
"This is your salvation." He made a grand gesture towards the image. "Salvation from this death our Gamilon faces."
The silence remained.
"But should this ship endure – should it come here, there is no guarantee of anything." The Leader stated. "The ones you hold most dear will face death because of this ship." Many of the men and women looked away, their eyes turning to the ground. "I do not adjure you to approve, only to agree that the Eratites must never reach this world."
This elicited a host of reluctant nods. Everyone slowly turned back to the scene – all except one. Out of the corner of his eye the Leader caught Elisa slipping out. He drew no attention to her. She likely had much on her mind with her husband's absence.
They all watched as the Eratite ship sailed into the corona of the red star that stood between them and escape from the all-consuming darkness that chased them.
"Captain, we could destroy the fleet; we could use the wave motion gun to –" Derek started.
"There's no time, Wildstar." Sandor interrupted, "the power drain would take too much out of us, and the gas would envelope us."
"So how is this better?" Derek challenged, "Those flares are gonna fry us." He pointed out the viewport at one of the star's nearby flares. A giant angry finger shot up out of the star like an enraged monster.
"Wildstar, sit down and wait." The Captain said with such authority that Derek felt compelled to do just as he said.
Wildstar sat down and shut up, though he radiated his displeasure to those around him, making Mark more nervous than he already was. The navigator's hands were already shaking as they began their approach.
The star loomed before them, roiling in anger at the trespassers.
Thankfully, the Gamilon ships weren't following them to the star, though the gas had no such inhibitions and billowed along, coming closer and closer – too close in fact.
Alarms screeched as small pieces of the ship were consumed by the dreadful void.
"Captain, we have to speed up. It`s gaining too quickly. We`ll be swallowed whole if we don't get out of here." Said Sandor.
"Venture, increase our speed."
Mark swallowed hard. "Yes – Captain."
Venture punched up the speed. The Argo shot forward into the crimson death ahead. Mark felt like he was going to die right there, but he held on to the controls, and with them, he kept his grip on reality.
The feeling of the nav console under his gloved hands – the control he had over this ship – it was both terrifying and comforting. The familiar and the unfamiliar; reality, and the escape he craved, crashed down on him at the same instant.
For one flicker of an eye he fought with the urge to run for his life in blind fear, then the sense of confidence in his fellow crew and his duty to all of them and those he'd left behind on Earth blasted through his doubt. He narrowed his eyes at the storm ahead and, teeth gritted, he took them all into the sea of the red star.
Elisa felt sick. She rushed to the nearest washroom and promptly lost whatever she'd eaten that afternoon.
How could killing that entire ship's crew be the only way to prevent Gamilon's death? How did Leader Desslok know that that ship was coming to Gamilon? Perhaps they were simply seeking a place for their people to go in the wake of everything their planet was undergoing? Was this even necessary?
She felt another rush of heat come up her throat.
She reached for a damp cloth to cool her burning eyes and face. She washed away the acrid taste of stomach acid and wiped the tears from her irritated eyes.
Thankfully no one else had come in and she took the opportunity to lock the washroom door so she would have the time to let what she'd seen settle into her mind. Perhaps she was overreacting to what the Leader was doing. After all, he'd led them through so much already.
He'd saved them all from the rule of Deun the Usurper – his own flesh and blood. He'd slowed the spread of the plague on Gamilon and eradicated it on Iscandar. He'd protected them all from the terror of the zealots, and through his efforts, saved more lives than Elisa could even count.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, her stomach still roiling, but not letting the nausea get the best of it.
But as she thought of her people and everything that had gone on in the past several years, the image of that ship – that strange, alien ship – broke through and, though she had never met them, in her mind she saw the faces of the ones they were trying to kill at this very moment.
The vision gripped her and try as she might, she couldn't let it go. The future of two worlds was at stake, hers, and theirs. She wanted so much to be able to see her people live and thrive as they once had – as she knew they could again.
She gripped her upset stomach as it started to roil again.
There was only one way she could see this clearly, and it wasn't watching the sickening display in the other room.
She pulled out her communicator and, hands still shaking from throwing up, she turned it on and said, "Raymond Talan."
When Elisa didn't return, Desslok wasn't surprised. He knew she hadn't the stomach for such things.
He stared at the ship descending into the great maw of flames and let the smallest smirk of triumph escape his impenetrable façade. Almost immediately he felt remorse for what he'd done to the ones he'd sent that creature to destroy.
An instant later he sensed a presence, one he had not felt since Masterson's departure and a seed of hope started to grow in his dread-filled heart, but just as soon as it appeared it was quashed without mercy as the all-too familiar darkness he'd been mired in grabbed the speck of light and crushed it in its terrible hand.
"You are mine, great leader of men. You cannot entertain such thoughts of turning back now that you've come so far." The voice he'd come to dread echoed in his mind with a finality that he knew he couldn't resist. He had to do this. The darkness living in the shadows had made its presence known again, and it was right. There was no turning back now. He knew in his heart somehow that the Eratites would come here. The presence in the dark had never stated it, but he knew.
The time was coming when he would see the faces of those he most needed to destroy. In his heart he knew this too, but he watched with hope that he was wrong, wishing to see the end of the Eratites and their misbegotten ship.
All of Mark's nerves were on fire. The flares were predictable to a point and Sandor and Nova were feeding him data from their consoles so he could keep them out of the molten star's flares.
The star was the least of their problems now though. The real problem was the cloud of darkness bearing down on them from behind. It moved like a living thing – as though it had a will all its own.
Black hands reached out towards the ship, grasping for any tiny hold it could find.
Venture could sense those fingers clawing, probing the gap between them and it, straining to pull them into its dreadful maw of never-ending death.
Just when he thought they had a chance of making it through the inferno, a giant wall of flame shot up out of the star's surface.
"Captain?!" Venture's voice rose sharply as he quickly tried to maneuver around the pillar of fire.
He just narrowly missed it, but there would be more unpredicted flares.
"Maintain our speed, Venture." Avatar replied, his eyes fixed on the flames all around them.
"But Captain, we – " Mark began
"Venture, maintain our speed." The captain repeated firmly.
Mark gritted his teeth against the fear rising in his gut. Why was the captain doing this? He was going to get them all killed.
The darkness oozed forward. Its hands outstretched towards the ship running away in vain. Didn't they know there was no escape now? The flares would take them if he did not.
The darkness laughed. Its prey thought it was merely a cloud of toxic gas with a voracious appetite, but what it didn't know was that there was a mind and a will infused into it. Its master wanted nothing left to chance. The ship was to die today. There was nothing that the Master had not planned for. He only wished that every soul onboard might know the dread of seeing the Master face to face, but the Enemy had seen fit not to allow that. There were many of His onboard. But there was nothing they could do to prevent this – nothing.
The darkness laughed again in glee at the thought of presenting so many souls to his master at once.
He plunged onward, reaching out towards the ship, straining to grasp it.
He grinned as his finger brushed the very end of its hull melting away another piece of the cursed ship.
"Wildstar, ready the wave motion gun." Avatar ordered, brow furrowed, eyes intense, the seed of thought blooming into a fully fledged plan.
"Aye, Captain. But I thought we didn't have time to use it." Derek replied.
"We have no choice now." The captain countered. "There will be more flares like the last. We can't be caught in it."
Derek shrugged and did as he was told.
Sandor looked up from his console. "Captain, I got a good sensor reading from that last flare. I think I can pinpoint the next one."
"Excellent." Avatar said, then asked Wildstar, "How soon will we have the wave gun ready?"
"Minute or so." Derek replied, engrossed in his console.
"Be ready to begin the countdown on my mark." The captain said.
"Flare activity in thirty seconds off to port." Sandor announced. "And it's a big one."
"Venture, take us to the coordinates Sandor just sent you. We finish this now." Said the captain.
"Yes, Sir. Ten degrees to port." Mark acknowledged as he thought, "How… are we going to survive this..."
Leader Desslok let his gaze wander from the image of the ship long enough to see that several of his council had lost the disgusted look they'd harbored when they'd first arrived.
Celestella was the only one who'd shown unashamed joy at the ship's desperation, and though he thought it crude to display her thought so openly he was thankful for the support. Perhaps if one council member showed approval, others wouldn't hesitate to show theirs as well.
That was one of the reasons he kept the Jireli and her strange sister. They at least showed some enthusiasm, and for all their oddities and faults, he found their presence helpful enough to consider them of value.
He looked back to the Eratite ship and watched as the darkness edged ever closer.
"Your doom is upon you… Eratites."