The Nightmare Kid

PROLOGUE

First Lieutenant Anira Brazym stepped into the lift and turned. The door whooshed shut.

“Conference level,” she said.

A disembodied female voice responded, “Aye-aye, ma’am.”

Annie eyed her reflection in one of the silver bands separating the grey wall panels. Wavy brown hair framed an olive-colored face dominated by light green eyes. That face sat atop a five-foot-seven-inch frame, and the workouts required of an Ex Corps officer kept that body fit and trim.

Suddenly, the overhead lighting dimmed to half its normal brightness. It then increased to three-quarter normal and decreased to half again. It finally resumed normal intensity.

Annie frowned and thought, Showing our age, are we?

The old girl didn’t have much left. Minor issues like this had been cropping up more and more of late. Annie prayed the impending ex (exploratory mission) went off without a hitch, which caused her to remember the last …

She shook her head to rid it of such thoughts as the lift slowed to a stop. The door whooshed open, and the voice said, “Conference level, ma’am.”

Annie muttered a “thanks” as she stepped out to join a stream of people flowing to the right. She didn’t have to look ahead to know they were headed for the auditorium at the end of the hall. One shuttle assigned to each of the ten planets in this system multiplied by the five-man crew of each shuttle plus the support personnel required aboard Mother equaled the necessity of a large room for the pre-ex briefing.

Upon entering the auditorium, Annie stepped aside until her right leg pressed against an empty seat on the back row. She scanned the room for Commander Zoth and saw him talking to Commander Ronis at the edge of the stage. As comm (communications) chief of the PCS Renegade, Zoth was her boss.

Ronis smiled at Annie’s approach. Purple eyes sparkled in a pale face; eyes that complimented hair so black as to suggest a purple hue. Combed straight back, the hair seemed plastered in place, but Annie knew it wasn’t. That’s how it grew. Between the eyes and hair arched a pair of eyebrows as thin as penciled lines. All this rested upon a slim build. Many an adversary regretted mistaking Ron’s more feminine features as evidence of a soft opponent.

As she neared, Zoth smiled. Only his pointed ears suggested he might not be an Earthling. “Good morning, Annie.”

She nodded a greeting to both men. The auditorium was filling fast, so she didn’t have time to waste. To Zoth she said, “Lighting in Lift D malfunctioned on my way up. It didn’t go out completely, but it dimmed a couple of times.”

Zoth frowned. “I sure hope we can get one last ex out of the old girl. Thanks, Annie. I’ll inform Maintenance.”

Ron pointed at the growing audience. “We’d best find seats before they’re all taken.”

Shall we? he added, but no words passed his lips. Ron was a Centi, which meant he was a telepath, and the mind-connection between he and Annie was exactly what the PC (Planetary Confederation) intended.

Annie nodded. It only took a few paces to reach a pair of empty seats to First Lieutenant Krok’s left.

Most of the Renegade’s crew was humanoid. Annie’s paternal grandfather was a native of Kylan (essentially human), but the rest of her ancestry was Earthling. Ron could pass for human were it not for those purple eyes, and so would Zoth were it not for his pointed ears. Krok, however, was one of the most non-human life forms aboard the starship.

Were the Kalinthian warrior to rise, he would stand just shy of seven feet tall. His body seemed mostly human with a build that would have Schwarzenegger drooling with envy, but his most noticeable features were definitely feline. Yellowish-green pupils sat in narrow eyes flanking the bridge of a large flat nose. Except for the black area surrounding his nostrils, his nose was of the same tawny color as his face and body. His upper lip was hairless save for eight long whiskers (four to a side). A huge brown mane framed his face and merged with a beard reaching to his chest. An attempt had been made to brush the mane back, but the wild look was obviously the norm. A tail with a dark, furry tip protruded from the seat of his pants and currently snaked across his thigh.

As Ron took the seat nearest Krok, his diminutive stature and serene countenance stood in stark contrast to the scowling giant who seemed willing to dismember at the barest hint of a whim. Annie sat to Ron’s left to complete the trinity which formed the nucleus of every crew Ron commanded. The PC preferred to permanently pair CO and comm when one of them was a Centi to take advantage of the mind-connection between a team’s mind and mouth. Krok brought muscle to the team, and his membership in the trinity grew from a PC modification of a Kalinthian custom.

Krok belonged to the warrior caste on Kalinth, and Kalinthians believe death in battle is the highest honor to which a warrior could aspire. In the deciding battle of the war to defend the planet against the Axis, however, Ron saved Krok’s life, which caused Krok’s social status to drop dramatically. Since the savior purchased years the warrior would not have otherwise possessed, those years belonged to the savior. Ron acquired a slave when he saved Krok’s life, but the PC opposed slavery. Wishing to maintain good relations with these hard-won allies, the PC compromised by appointing Krok to serve as Ron’s security officer for life.

Chimes sounded, and the room hushed. The auditorium lighting dimmed (on purpose), and all eyes turned toward the stage, where Zoth stood in the soft glow of a spotlight.

“As you all know, the Renegade has reached R-80, her final ex,” Zoth began.

A voice from the row just behind Ron’s Trinity whispered. “And it’s about time. She’s falling apart.”

Zoth glared at the area where the whisper originated. “I’ll not tolerate your sorry humor today, Parker.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” came the sheepish reply.

Zoth’s eyes took in the entire audience.

“I know you all looked forward to another of my infamous pre-ex briefings, but …”

He paused to allow the remark to sink in and ignored Parker’s “Yeah, right.”

“… I will instead yield the floor to a man who has earned the privilege of presiding over the Renegade’s last pre-ex, a man who will follow his last command into retirement.” Turning to his right, he said, “Admiral Christopher Drake.”

Annie put a hand on Ron’s arm. “So it’s true! They gave him his second star and he’s retiring!”

“And I lost 50 bucks,” Lieutenant Commander Johnny Parker groaned behind her.

Ignoring him, Ron put his hand on Annie’s. “Aye, but he earned that star.”

Retrieving her hand, Annie smiled and thought, You know that’s what I meant.

She turned back to the stage and frowned. Sure, she was excited at the official recognition of Drake’s promotion, but she shouldn’t have put her hand on Ron that way. The involuntary move also worried her because it suggested the mate-thoughts, which had increased in frequency as they approached this system, had acquired a physical aspect.

Ron frowned, too. Putting his hand on hers was a natural reaction, but Annie obviously read more into it than was intended. He once again felt concern over her decidedly anti-social nature. Unless heavily pressured, she would rather spend her free time at a console studying Earth files rather than kicking up her heels in the ship’s canteen or planet-side. No wonder she was still single.

Admiral Drake cleared his throat at center stage. “Thank you, Commander. I wasn’t expecting this, but a captain who doesn’t know his ship’s mission well enough to give a pre-ex isn’t worth his salt, is he?”

The audience chuckled as the spotlight faded and holographic globes materialized behind Drake. Flat rings encircled the equator of the bluish ball on his left, and a big red spot dominated the surface of the globe on his other side. Opposite Drake from that yellow, brown, and red striped giant floated a sea of rocky debris. From his far right, a yellowish glow suggested a sun in the distance.

“The Renegade has nearly reached anchor at the heart of R-80, an A-Class system of ten planets with an asteroid belt between Planets 3 and 4 and an Oort cloud at its periphery.”

The air about Drake turned pale blue, and the giant planets and asteroid belt, which was what someone on the bridge would have seen had they peered out over Mother’s bow, faded away to be replaced by a map of R-80. The sun stood on Drake’s right and the rest of the system extended to his left. Beside each planet was a number corresponding to that planet’s position in relation to the sun. A starship rested between Planets 5 and 6.

“Long range scans suggest Planet 3 is Possibly Intelligent but not space-faring. The other planets don’t seem inhabited, although 4 may have been at some time. We’ll conduct a more detailed scan once the old girl’s in position, but we don’t expect any surprises. Any hopes of a Space Capable Planet or an Outpost rest with Planet 3.”

Drake lowered his eyes. “The, er, accident at R-79 necessitated a reshuffling of shuttle...