4 - JOULE

  4

JOULE

          The ground shook as the airlock made contact with the unknown ship, and Joule busied herself with a monitor on the wall. With it she was able to access the short range scanners and hopefully be able to shed some light on the ever increasingly enigmatic situation.  A loud hissing sound echoed from the hatch as the compartment inbetween the other ship and their own pressurized, and seconds later their door opened, Kova walking through.

          "Getting anything?" Kova asked.

          "It's weak but it's there," Joule turned from the monitor and following him inside once she got all of the data she could. "One occupant, no movement. And they have at most a few minutes of life support left. Still not responding to any hails."

          Kova took a second to think and reflect upon her words.  "So you're telling me that who or what ever is in there has a good chance of dying if we don't do anything.  That is, if they're not dead already."

          "Well..."

          "Can you see in there?"

          "I can try," she walked toward the hatch and removed her glove.  The Intrepid's airlock was attached directly to the hull of the other ship where its own entrance hatch was.  Since there was no reply to their hails, and the pilot hadn't extended their own airlock, the only way to gain access to the ship was to cut through the hull.  Such an action was reserved for only extreme circumstances, such as to prevent loss of life as it was in this case, among others.  Joule rested her palm on the hull of the other ship and closed her eyes, concentrating.  She was very gifted as a Psion, earning quite a reputation throughout the Redeemer community and the Federation, but using her gifts through thick metal and empty space beyond to "see" someone she didn't know was no simple proposition.  It took her a few moments to feel anything, the occupant's life energy was almost completely gone.

          "She's still alive but not for long," Joule removed her hand from the hull and donned her glove again.

          "She?" Kova slid his helmet onto his head.

          "Yes." Joule followed suit.  Kova grabbed a large tool that hung on the wall.  It was specially designed to cut through any bulkhead, but required a user of strong physical stature.  First it softened the metal hull through the application of intense heat and then, using a tough vibroblade, cut through with relative ease.  Kova got to work immediately, tracing the outline of the hatch to speed the process, and within minutes, the hatch was free from the rest of the ship.  As Kova was cutting, Joule was attaching a large device to act as a hinge, which, through suction, kept the freed hatch in place and prevented it from flying about in the zero gravity environment. 

          With a grunt Kova pulled the hatch inward, revealing the darkness within the mysterious ship.  It was dead quiet inside save for a distant sounding beep, the silence unnerving, and Kova illuminated the area before him with a bright light from an electric torch mounted on his heavy armored pauldrons.  It was a much smaller ship than the Intrepid, no more than a one man light recon craft, but it looked like a ship that would have been made a century ago, despite being well maintained.

          Kova took point, Judgement at the ready, followed closely by Joule, her Denial holstered at her side.  While his priority was safety, hers was the well being of the pilot.

          "Clear." Kova's voice rang in her helmet, and she turned left towards the cockpit, stepping carefully about, guided by his shoulder lamp.  His light illuminated wisps of silvery hair, suspended lazily above whomever sat in the pilot's seat.  Joule rounded to face the unconscious pilot, having removed a small portable scanner from her robes and through it taking a reading.  Faint beeps and clicks emitted from the scanner as it performed its functions, and she looked into the face of a young Hadaran female, clothed in grey, her robes caked in dark brown blood from a wound in her shoulder.

          "Hadaran female, twenty to twenty five years of age.  Unknown affiliations.  No matches in any databases yet.  Severe ballistic trauma to the shoulder.  Still breathing though, but it's weak."

          "This is getting stranger by the second."  Kova roved about the ship's cabin.

          "Well I can't do anything for her here," Joule put her scanner back into her robes and undid the safety restraints that confined the Hadaran to her chair.  "We need to get her to the med bay."

          Kova moved over to the Joule and gave her a hand with lifting the stranger out of the seat, and as the two moved through the cabin, a small trail of brown blood floated lazily behind them.

          "When you get her stabilized, come back and see if you can find a log or record or something.  I'd like to know what she's doing all the way out here." Kova ordered as the two moved back through the hatch and into the airlock compartment.

          "Copy," Joule pressed a button on the bulkhead to unlock the far door, Kova having taken over handling the stranger, and the two moved through the hatch and back onto the Intrepid.

          "Vektor, we're back on board." Kova had yet to remove his helmet, knowing the Slayer would be listening.

          "Copy that, Templar.  Shutting airlock doors and resuming gravitational rotation."

          Moments later came the strange feeling of the simulated gravity making Joule feel heavier and heavier as she walked, and its onset coupled with her magnetic soled boots caused her to come close to tripping over her own feet.  She removed her helmet, her blue-black hair falling lazily about her shoulders.  Kova left his helmet on, since his hands were occupied with carrying the stranger, who remained unconscious.

          "Will she be okay, do you think?" Kova looked down at the woman's face, concern in his voice.

          "I honestly don't know, she's lost a lot of blood.  I'm more concerned with how she ended up all the way out here.  There aren't any nearby star systems, or any popular jump routes.  Based on how fresh her wound looks she couldn't have come far from wherever she got it.  This is all very strange."

          "It's turning out to be one of those days." Kova remarked, the two rounding the corner toward the med bay, "But I share your concern."  Within minutes they had arrived, and Kova laid the woman on a cot inside.

          Suddenly, the entire ship shook violently, almost sending Joule crashing to her feet, and Kova bent over forward, almost falling completely on top of the strange woman.

          "Vektor!"

          "Sorry captain, bogey just appeared out of nowhere and opened fire!" came Vektor's voice over the intercom system, and the ship shook again.  Kova took a moment to pause before responding.

          "Detach from the other ship and begin taking evasive maneuvers!" he ran from the med bay and sprinted down the passageway toward the bridge, leaving Joule to tend to her patient.

          Joule looked from where Kova had exited the bay back down to the strange woman, whose eyes were now wide open, two large, black orbs staring up at her in fear and confusion.

          "Do not fear, I'm here to help," Joule wasn't even sure if the woman heard or understood her, strapping her down to the cot for her safety.  But when she raised her hand, the stranger with an unpredictable feat of strength and speed clasped Joule's wrist.  The ship violently shook again, and Joule braced herself, her patient slowly looking about in confusion before locking eyes with Joule yet again. 

          Bewilderment left her gaze and was replaced with determination, and the Hadar pulled from her robes with her other hand a small silvery object.  At first glance Joule thought it was a simple sphere, but then she realized that it was much more complex, composed of many sides and facets, and upon which was the most intricate ritualistic looking carvings she had probably ever seen.  The stranger placed the object into the open hand attached to the wrist that she held in her grip, and Joule noticed that her breathing had sharpened, blood trickling from her mouth as she gasped for air.

          "Stay with me," Joule leaned in close to check her pulse.  It was very weak, and only growing weaker.

          The Hadaran then let go of Joules clothed wrist and touched the bare skin of her face, her fingers cold and weak as they gently caressed her skin, and almost immediately images raced through the Elyrian's mind.  There was another Hadaran, a male, cloaked in grey, someone the strange woman was very close to, perhaps family.  Then she saw a barren world, the topography of which was very bleak and colorless, strong winds blowing coarse dust across jagged stone.  Then she was in a cave, perhaps on the same world as before, surrounded by glyphs and runes carved by ancient hands, glowing silver.  The last image she saw was the most frightening, a metallic insect like skull with eyes of a ghostly blue staring back at her.

          "The swarm..." the woman coughed, struggling to form the words, as Joule's mind cleared, "...is coming." 

          Suddenly she became very still, no longer struggling for breath, and her hand fell to her side.  Joule stood up straighter only to have her dark assumption revealed to be true.  The stranger had passed in her arms, as if waiting to die only after giving her the strange object.  The ship shook yet again, but Joule wasn't much phased, taking a moment to study the strange Hadaran woman, her expression that of shock and disbelief.  Questions raced through her mind, making her wonder who she was, what kind of organizations she belonged to, what she was doing so far in deep space, and what this object she now held in her hand was.  The visions she had seen had done nothing to answer her questions, but had simply compounded them.  Moments later she snapped from her trance when she realized her name was being called over the intercom.

          "Joule what are you doing?" Kova's voice sounded, "Get up here now!"

           "Right away, Templar!" Joule answered as she re-adorned her helmet and slipped the unusual object into a safe place within her robes.  

          After she finished she bolted through the door and down the passageway towards the bridge as quickly as her legs could take her, momentarily losing her footing somewhat when the Intrepid shook yet again.  A brilliant white flash of light came from the airlock Kova and herself had just came from, and she feared the worst for the stranger's ship as she put it to her back and sped down the corridor.

          In that moment her thoughts shifted from the Hadaran woman to what was causing the ship to shake so violently.  Who was attacking them, and how did they find them so far out in space?  It was odd enough that Valiant squad across the Hadaran's derelict ship just moments before her death, but for whoever their assailant was to find them as well was extremely difficult to believe.  It did no good to worry about that at the moment, however, and she decided to put such thoughts at the back of her mind and focus on the task at hand: survival.  There weren't any major stations nearby that they could take the Intrepid to in order to get repairs should they need them, so it was up to the three of them to ensure that whatever conflict they had been engaged in resulted in as little damage as possible.

          Seconds later she arrived at the bridge while Kova and Zyro were maneuvering the ship and administering countermeasures, and she took her rightful place at her Templar's right, standing by for instruction.  In the meantime she accessed the medium range scanners in an attempt to lock on to their assailant and find out who exactly was attacking them, but both ship's quick movements proved that such an action was nearly impossible.

          "Shields at twenty three percent!" Vektor busied himself with directing power to the various shield sections and the different countermeasure systems the Intrepid had at its disposal.

          "Give it everything she has, Slayer!" Kova barked, the most determined look in his face Joule had seen in quite some time.  "Psion, find me a system!  Any system!  We take any more direct hits and it's all over!"

          Joule typed away at her station desperately in an attempt to follow his order, hoping that somehow she had enough time.  A few seconds later, she found one.

          "The nearest system is in Coalition space!" she knew Kova wouldn't approve but he still needed to know.

          "Give me the nearest Federation system!" Kova growled while jerking the ship's controls around, making the three almost fly right out of their seats.  Joule never stopped looking, knowing he would say something like this, as the ship shook violently yet again from another hit from their attacker.

          "Shields at sixteen percent!"

          "Come on, Joule!" Kova began sounding more and more desperate with each hit.

          "Kov, the nearest Federation system is nearly at maximum jump range and would take three times as long to charge the jump drives!  Recommend jumping to the Coalition system, at least to get away from-"

          "Fine, just get us out of here!" Kova commanded.  Joule plotted in the coordinates to the Coalition system and began the jump drive charging sequence.

          "Ten seconds to jump!" Joule shouted as Kova steered the ship hard to avoid the relentless attacks from their opponent, but the Intrepid still jolted from their endless barrage.  The G forces were starting to take their toll, as banking so steeply in a vacuum wasn't the easiest to do.  Joule felt blood rush to her head then rush in the opposite direction and back again, and hoped that she wouldn't be sick inside her own helmet.  Kova was the best pilot she knew, but even he knew his own limits, and it seemed that for the moment he was choosing to ignore them.  He still had to orient the ship in the right direction of their destination, and at the moment they weren't even close.

          "Shields at five percent!"

          "Five, four, three," Joule chanted loudly as the jump drives prepared to launch them far away from here.  The ship rattled intensely once again.  She commanded the system to show Kova the coordinates and the correct alignment vector, hoping he would notice and correct the Intrepid's trajectory by the time she finished her countdown.  If not, then they would end up who knew where, and she didn't fancy being stranded in intergalactic space.

          "Shields down!" Vektor screeched as the ship convulsed from the bombardment, the shields no longer protecting it, and their assailant now doing direct damage to the Intrepid's hull.

          "Two, one.  Jump!" Joule called out as her entire body felt like it was being forced through her seat, the blood in her veins rushing to the back of her head and her eyes feeling like they would sink into her skull.  The ship continued to rumble as they traveled through the Bulk, but the fact that they were still alive was comforting to her, and she hoped that in the time between the shields going down and the ship making the jump nothing was damaged too seriously.  Joule checked her monitor, and was relieved to know that somehow throughout all the confusion of the skirmish, Kova had managed to set them on the proper course.  She breathed a sigh of relief, and allowed herself to calm down and look through a window to her right and look beyond the Intrepid into the fifth dimension. 

          Traveling through the Bulk was always such a surreal experience.  Physics didn't exist here, there was no up nor down, no past, present, or future.  One could go mad from the revelation, and every time she traveled through, Joule wondered what it was like for those brave souls to make the very first journey through the unknown, the space outside of space and time.  One could easily get lost here, as a quick trip here took one many lightyears across the galaxy.  It was almost magical, she could see through the small windows of the bridge excited particles and the very fabric of space and time zooming by, carrying them to their destination. 

          She had once imagined jumping into the Bulk and simply never stopping, wondering where she would wind up.  Would she eventually reach another universe completely separate from her own?  Would she survive such a journey?  If the laws of physics were different there she could simply collapse into a singularity, or explode with the energy of a thousand thousand nuclear detonations.  Or she could survive and meet an alternate version of herself, or a version of her universe where she had never existed.  She often fantasized about such things but never actually thought to carry them out, the fear of the unknown winning out over her wonder and awe.

          Joule looked over at her Valiant squad comrades, and, like her, they had similar looks of relief upon their faces, the stress of the altercation alleviated.  As befitting of the captain of the ship, Kova spoke first.

          "Damage report."

* * * * *

          "What's wrong, Mika?" Wensel noticed that she had been quite flustered since the two strangers received the fuel he'd given them and left.

          "Nothing, love," she lied, having barely touched her supper, while Sira, his beautiful little girl, had almost finished hers.

          "Come, now," he had known his wife for far too long to be fooled by such a ruse.

          "It's just," she began, pausing, trying to find the right words to say, "should we have just given them that fuel for nothing?"

          "What would we have done with their money, eh?  There some new shoes at the market catch your eye?" He was joking with her, of course.  She wasn't that kind of woman.

          "You're right," she said, with a solemn tone.

          "They could have just come in, taken everything, and killed us if they wanted.  The fact that they were nice enough to ask first made up my mind for me.  They're okay as far as I care."

          "Don't talk like that in front of Sira, Wen!" Mika scolded, anger in her face.  Just then a buzz echoed throughout the structure, a sound Wensel knew well.  It was the motion sensors that he had long ago placed outside, all around his establishment.  They went off from time to time, the local creatures every once in a while liked to get curious and investigate this strange area that stood out among the trees of their lush world.

          "Just hurry up and finish your supper, love, so we can turn in." Wensel stood up to go check and see if he could tell what had set off the sensors.

          Suddenly a roar erupted from his front doorway, and a shockwave of air came at him and hit him in the chest like a brick wall had been thrown at him.  He recovered as quickly as he could and ran, instinctively, to one side of the room where he had his rifle mounted on the wall.  He managed to grab it and look toward his now nonexistent doorway, and knew that he and his family had minutes to get to safety before they lost all oxygen to the outside, of which the increased air pressure guaranteed that that wouldn't take very long.  

          A lone figure stood where his doorway used to be, silhouetted against the daylight that came from outside.  Wensel raised his rifle at the figure, but his hand and forearm erupted with excruciating pain.  He looked down in horror, and his stomach roiled at the sight of a bloody stump where his left hand used to be.  He heard his wife exhume a blood curdling scream at the sound of gunfire, and his daughter crying out.

          "Papa!" she yelled, tears raining from her eyes, and she ran to him as he dropped to one knee, wrapping her arms around his neck.

          "Sira, go to mother!" he beseeched her, pushing her away.  She did not protest, running to his wife who stood feet behind him, dumbstruck and shocked, a look of intense fear in her eyes.  "Take her to the bedrooms and lock the door, we're losing air!" he commanded Mika, whom after a moment moved to obey, holding their daughter tight in her arms.

          "Not so fast," came a ragged voice, the voice of the man who'd invaded their home.  Wensel turned his sight to him to see that he had a handgun trained on Mika, whom had been rendered unmoving through fear.  He wore all black, with a smooth, sleek helmet covering his head.  Countless weapons and ammunition hung all about his tight fitting combat garments, and Wensel had a feeling that they were all deadly in his trained hands.

          "You b*****d," Wensel let out, fear and rage engaged in a tumultuous battle within him.  "What do you want with us?"

          "You entertained the company of those I seek," the man moved closer, keeping his handgun trained on Mika and pulling another, aiming directly at Wensel's forehead.  

          "They came, got some fuel and left!" Mika shouted through her tears, clutching Sira tightly as ever.

          "Where did they go, fools!" the man stopped short of burying the barrel of his gun into Wensel's head.  "Tell me or this will be much, much worse than it has to."

          "They went to another settlement to get jump drives." Wensel blurted, hating himself for being unable to defend his loved ones.  "Said something about heading to Cadmus after."

          The man let out a chuckle, which, through his helmet, sounded distorted and lightly robotic, but not any less chilling.

          "So they were able to make it off this planet," he lowered his weapons, but kept one aimed at Wensel.  "Jurai, prep the ship, we're going to Cadmus."

          For a moment Wensel was confused at what his attacker was saying, then he realized that he must have been talking to someone that worked with him through some sort of communicator in his helmet.  The thought that there was more than one person like this, and the fact that they worked together, was one that he cared not to entertain.  He began to feel light headed, and realized that if he didn't somehow stop the tremendous flow of blood from his arm, he'd faint, and possibly die.  His family was counting on him, and so far, he had failed them.  The pain was indescribable, but it was nothing compared to the pain within him, the knowledge that through his failure his wife and daughter were at risk of losing their lives.

          "No, we're done here."

          A brilliant flash erupted from the barrel of the man's handgun, and Wensel's pain was no more.