This story takes place in a hybrid universe; that is, it has elements of both EVO and Nova: systems, races, plot elements borrowing from both game schemes. How and why such a hybrid can exist will be explained in the final installment.
In the first two chapters of this story, Ramash, a street kid from Novitia, stows away on the Terra's Pride, a Federation exploratory vessel. The Pride had been disabled and boarded by Pirates, who had brutally murdered all but one of the ship's officers. The lone surviving officer, Mareshika Jubell, was a telepath who mindspoke to Ramash, awakening Ramash's latent telepathic abilities, and she recruited him to try to resist the pirates and take back the ship. One unsolved puzzle was the pirate's motivation in boarding the Pride; in the interrogation of the ship's officers, the pirates kept asking about a "Hypergate", whatever that was.
Ramash crawled along the jerry tube of the Terra's Pride, dragging a water module, an emergency medical kit, and two sacks of freeze-dried rations. He was sweating, exhausted, and his body was still bruised and aching from bouncing around his hiding place when the Pride was boarded by pirates three days before. His mode of travel was to scoot forward a few meters, pause, and listen and mentally scan for anyone perceiving him. He had had a couple of close calls, but so far the pirates had been inept at detecting his movements. He was also scanning for "friendly" minds Mareshika Jubell, his hidden co-conspirator, had telepathically transmitted to him the mental signatures of some of the surviving Pride's crew.
Two of those mental signatures flared into color in his mind. Below and to his right were two surviving crew. The names that went with the mindprints Mareshika had supplied were "Farus Jonah" and "Wahila Nasim". Farus was an engineer, Wahila was a life support systems tech. The two were imprisoned, alive but in fear and pain, waiting their turn to be interrogated by "Fabian", and "The Commander", a vicious woman who seemed to be in charge of the pirate's operation.
Ramash visualized Mareshika's lovely face. /I have found where Farus and Wahila are imprisoned. What should I do?/ he asked mentally, sending also a mental "feel" for where the captives were located in relation to Mareshika's hiding place.
/Neither of them are telepathic, and if you speak aloud, chances are you will be discovered. Yet we must let them know resistance is possible. Can you write in Galactic?/
/Barely. My mother taught me enough to communicate with offworld traders and to bargain in the marketplace. That was all she had time for/The familiar wave of sadness at the thought of his mother washed over Ramash. When it had passed, he sent /what should I write to them?/
As Mareshika sent the words to his mind, Ramash dug a pencil and card out of the emergency kit, and laboriously printed:
I AM RAMASH. MARESHIKA IS ALIV AN WAITIN 4 YO. WEE WELL TAK BAK THE PRIDE FROM PIRATS. GET FREE IF YO CAN IF NOT WELL HELP.
/your spelling needs work, but I think they'll get the message. It will serve/ Mareshika thought wryly.
Ramash abandoned his stash of supplies for the moment, and wriggled through the tube until he thought he was above the cell in which Wahila and Farus were held. He found a movable panel which held a light fixture. As quietly as he could, he lifted and levered the panel over so that he had a small gap. As he peered down into it, he could see light gleaming from the whites of two pairs of frightened eyes. The cell was dimly lit; only one of the five light cells was working. Ramash could see that Wahila, the woman, was not shackled, although Farus was. He wafted his note in her general direction, putting a finger to his lips at the same time. She nodded, and picked up the note, her expressive eyes widening as she read it. Then she held it in front of Farus' face, until he, too, nodded.
Suddenly there were footsteps and a grating noise. The door of the cell swung inward. Ramash, with no time to swing the panel back into place, made a quick decision. He again put his finger to his lips, and motioned to the prisoners to look at the doorway, which would be their normal response.
Bald head gleaming in the corridor light, a wiry spacer in dirty clothes sauntered into the room. He didn't even look up, for which Ramash was grateful. The man went straight to Wahila, and grabbed her wrist. "You're wanted, sweetheart. The crew are getting bored." He twisted her arm to her back and began to hustle her out of the door.
Ramash had been gathering himself for a leap, and surreptitiously pushing the panel all the way out of the way to widen the opening in the ceiling. When the pair were directly underneath him, Ramash plummeted down, and landed as a dead weight on the pirate's shoulders. Years of Novitia street fighting came in handy, as he viciously jabbed into the pirate's eyeballs with his thumbs.
The pirate screamed, and instinctively put his hands up to his face, letting go of his energy pistol. It skittered across the floor, and Farus strained to the limit of his leg shackles, and picked it up with his unchained hand, aiming it in the general direction of the pirate. Wahila was now fighting, too. She twisted back around, and choked off the pirate's air with a strong arm. Between them, they wrestled the man to the ground, then cold-cocked him with his own pistol, until he lay unconscious and bleeding on the cell floor.
"How much time do we have before someone investigates?" whispered Ramash into the sudden silence.
"Not enough," replied Wahila. "There's the keys let's free Farus and get out of here." It took time to find the proper key for Farus' shackles. Then Farus turned the energy pistol on the unconscious guard, ending his sorry life with a sizzle of burned flesh.
"Better for us if he's not able to tell what happened."
"Through the jerry tubes the way I came, or through the cells?" asked Ramash.
"Through the cells," said Farus. "I think that there are a few more of us held close by here. Where's Mareshika?"
At the mention of Mareshika, Ramash started guiltily. She was supposed to be in charge, yet he had freed the prisoners without asking her. Quickly, he closed his eyes, and sent flashes of images to her, to let her know what had happened,.
/I had hoped to have a quiet space and time to plan, Mareshika sent resignedly, but events have come to a head first. Try to free any other prisoners. I will make my own way there; I think that you are in Level B storerooms. Ask Wahila./
Ramash opened his eyes to see Wahila and Farus gazing at him with curiosity and some suspicion.
"Are we in Level B storerooms?" he asked. "Mareshika wants to meet us here."
"How are you communicating with her?" and "Why should we trust you?" asked Wahila and Farus at the same time.
Ramash appealed mentally to Mareshika. /Why should they trust me?/
With no warning, Ramash found that he had lost control of his face and voice. Someone else...Mareshika? was working his expression, was speaking words through his mouth.
"I am your Counselor, Mareshika Jubell. I am a telepath, as you suspected, and so is this boy, Ramash. Wahila, should I tell the confidence you told me about where you hid the stolen fahama sweets when you were a child? Farus, should I speak the secrets only I know about your sexual obsessions? We have no time for this. Follow this child and free our friends. I will join you as soon as I may."
As suddenly as it had begun, the presence of Mareshika drained out of him, leaving Ramash feeling unsettled and angry. /I truly apologize, Mareshika sent to him regretfully, but we have so little time to convince them, Please try to forgive me, and keep moving./
The two Pride crew, shocked but now believing, cautiously led the way into the corridor. They followed the dim lights along the floor until they heard muttered human voices. Proceeding slowly, they found another locked door, behind which were 5 more of their fellow crewmembers. After some fumbling with the keys, they had the door open. Two of the prisoners were shackled, and this too had to be undone.
All the while, Ramash kept lookout, straining with his physical and psychic senses to discover anyone approaching. When the motley, limping group of prisoners was finally ready to escape the storage area, he asked, "How do we get out of here?"
An older man, called Bannath by the others, pointed down the corridor. "That leads to a jerry tube to the hydroponics floor. Good place to hide they won't know their way around in there."
At last he heard what he had been dreading loud voices, shouts of alarm, hurrying heavy footsteps, jangling metal of keys and weapons. Their escape had been discovered. The escapees huddled back into alcoves along the corridor, hoping to hide from sight. A large, man came hurrying around the corner. He carried two laser pistols, and appeared comfortable using them, as he fired again and again, digging channels into the plasticrete walls. Two other pirates ran with him, swinging batons menacingly, searching for the escaped prisoners.
"You scum! You'll wish you had died in chains before I'm done with you!" roared the large man, and Ramash queasily recognized the voice of "Fabian", the torturer.
Wahila, leaning out from her alcove, shot neatly into one of the oncoming guards. He stopped, looked in dismay at the blackened, reddening hole on his jacket, then went pale and slipped to the floor. She aimed, and shot again, missing the oncoming guard.
Then, a ceiling light fixture popped back out of its hole, and the corridor became dimmer. A shadowy figure leaped down from the ceiling, and interposed itself between the prisoners and Fabian.
Like changing channels, Ramash stopped seeing the corridor, and looked out through Mareshika's perceptions. She stepped into a forest of thrumming blue/gray neurons, sparks jumping through their branches. She reached out and twisted a vine around a bunch of twining nerve fibers. A light blazed from her hands, and the bundle of fibers flared up soundlessly. Mareshika turned in panic, leaped out......
Fabian stopped in his tracks. His mouth was still open, still working, but no sound came out. His eyes rolled back in his head. The effect was almost comical, until Fabian began to convulse and thrash around mindlessly, falling back and cracking his skull against the wall. Then, his eyes were shut, and his limbs were limp, but his torso continued to jerk and buck.
The remaining guard remained standing, goggling at the sight of Fabian's throes, until another set of laser pulses from Wahilah brought him down, too.
Ramash found his way, more by touch than by sight, to where Mareshika sagged against a doorframe. /He was an epileptic. I went into his brain and caused a seizure. I am...very tired /, she projected. Ramash guided her to where the others waited. "Let's get out of here," he begged.
Bannath calmly walked back to where Fabian's body continued to convulse, and removed the two laser pistols, a metal baton, a radio, and another set of keys. The other prisoners followed suit with the other guards. Bannath shot Fabian twice in the skull, ending his epileptic throes.
"Now we can go," Bannath said into the sudden silence.
Much later that evening, the group of prisoners lay hidden in a hydroponics bay. A row of lead-lined radiation-proof freezers protected them from cursory scans, and they were able to eat from the stores Ramash had gone back to retrieve, and rest, and plan. Ramash had been formally introduced to the Pride crewmembers, who were reservedly trusting him. Ramash was included in the awe in which they held Mareshika, especially since she had demonstrated her telekinetic abilities by attacking Fabian's brain. Mareshika was still exhausted, leaning on the wall, holding her knees as if she was willing herself to sit upright.
Ramash kept looking at her, stealing glances, suddenly shy to speak aloud with this woman who had shared so much of his thoughts. Of course, she was aware of him.
/Stop that/, she mindspoke, irritably. /What is it that you want to say? Speak aloud!/
"How did you do that....stop the big guy, Fabian, that way?" he asked hesitantly.
All around their small camp, other conversations hushed as people strained to hear Mareshika's answer.
"I...projected myself inside his mind, inside my image of his mind. I saw that pattern of electrical bursts that I had learned means the brain is prone to seizures. I took advantage of his weakness and triggered a seizure." She shrugged, as if it was all very simple.
"But how....?" began Ramash...
"I can't explain it any better right now! I'm exhausted. I'll show you how to do it yourself, if we ever have time. Now leave me alone!" she snapped, then turned on her side, and pulled a ragged blanket over her head. In seconds, she was sleeping.
The ragged group continued to plan to retake the Pride. The best plan seemed to be to shut off life support to the Pirates, while maintaining it for themselves. With Wahila's and Farus' expertise in life support and engineering, and Bannath's leadership, the plan took shape. Those three crewmembers went off to see what they could sabotage.
Ramash, left out of the plans except for making one observation, that the pirates did not seem to be proficient in the use of the Pride's internal scans, stayed out of the conversation and fell asleep himself.
He was awakened some hours later by the sounds of banging pipes, despairing cries, and hissing air. From far away, ducts carried the sounds of pirates slowly asphyxiating. One stubborn person pounded on the pipes for several minutes...long past the point at which he should have died. Ramash shivered.
The group huddled around the radio taken from Fabian, listening to the dying pirates last communications.
In between curses, mumblings, and gasps, there wasn't a whole lot to learn. But at the last, he heard the chilling voice of "Madame Commander", the vicious woman who had ordered the torture of the Pride's crew..
"You incompetent whelps..they've outmaneuvered us. All hands, get to the shuttle bay and find a spacesuit. Suit up or die!"
Then the radio went dead.
I decided to divide the last installment between parts 3 and 4, because it's quite long. I'll post part 4, the conclusion, within a week.
mj
(This message has been edited by moderator (edited 05-27-2002).)
(This message has been edited by mamajama (edited 05-29-2002).)
