Chapter 6

Dixon finally stopped seeing two of Dokes about thirty minutes after the medic wrapped a gauzy bandage around the journalist's head and pumped a small blue vial of Clarinox into his right arm.

“Thanks,” Dixon mumbled, sitting on the ramp of the Unfettered, his eyes rarely leaving the main entrance to the Minder vessel. He kept expecting Meghan Falkenberg to step back into view, but it was an expectation dominated largely by dread, fear of what would happen when she returned. The aliens obviously didn't care for Captain Panderyn's poison pill gambit and now they had upped the stakes by grabbing the only other civilian for some nefarious purpose.

At the moment, the captain stood in the open hatchway of the airlock at the top of the ramp, hands on his hips. Clearly consternated by this turn of events, he huffed and asked Adelman, “You're sure Dixon didn't push Ms. Falkenberg across that threshold?”

The private shook his head. “Captain, Mr. Dixon did his best to stop her. I won't say she went of her own volition, but I know for sure that he didn't give her a shove.”

“It's not like their taking her will change your mind about Project Blow-It-All-Up, right?” Dixon asked, looking up the ramp at the captain. “In fact, I'll put good Consortium credits on the bet that you're going to tell Brechtman to speed it up.”

Panderyn offered a curt nod to the journalist. “That makes sense.” A taut smile, then: “Dokes, Adelman, report to Brechtman and see if there's anything you can do to help. Send the other troops out to stand watch over the Unfettered.”

“Aye, sir,” the two soldiers said, saluting before they clomped up the ramp and ducked past the captain, who stepped aside to make room for their passing.

“How's your engineer's hand?” Dixon asked.

The captain shrugged. “He's always up for a challenge.”

“Look, I know I screwed up,” the journalist replied, rubbing the palm of his right hand on the back of his sore neck. Probably somewhere else the Thul went probing earlier, he suspected. “I'm sorry. I've been going through a lot of bullshit lately, none of which has anything to do with you or your team, and getting hijacked by some overcompensating transdimensional alien assholes didn't make things any better. If we were going back home, I'd want to make it up to Brechtman somehow.”

“Yeah, well, he wants to get even with you too,” Panderyn said. “He's too busy working on the reactor to think about what to do about it. So, I'm helping him dream up a suitable response.” Three soldiers moved through the airlock, past the captain, and down the ramp to stand watch in close proximity to the Unfettered. “Babysitting unit's here. I wouldn't worry too much about Ms. Falkenberg, Dixon. We'll blow a nice chunk out of the hull of this behemoth and all our problems will be over.” With that assurance, the captain disappeared back into the starship so that he could go back to looming over Brechtman, contemplating the grand comeuppance he envisioned for the Il'Ri'Kamm Hive Mind. The captain's moral absolutism had a certain quaint charm to it, but it demonstrated a fundamental failure to understand the Minders or their inherent nature.

First encountered during the previous decade by interstellar explorer Eduard Ocartus on a dusty world known as Sagittarius, Minders weren't flesh and blood creatures whose lives could be extinguished by something as mundane as a reactor blast. They existed outside of the familiar framework of space and time. More often than not, they could only be discerned by humans as transient ghost images, like shadows of memories and the occasional sense of deja vu. No, Dixon didn't know much about much thanks to his dependence on the Infomatrix, but he had read several files on these aliens and their discovery by humankind on his way to the Soltek hangar before the launch.

He didn't doubt that when Panderyn finally blew up the Unfettered, it would cause structural damage to the massive Minder vessel. But he was equally certain that the explosion wouldn't do much more than inconvenience the Minders while it killed the prisoners. A noble sacrifice, maybe, but pointless. Unfortunately, Dixon felt his options were limited under the current circumstances. He didn't have any weapons. He didn't have any collateral to leverage against Panderyn. And even if he somehow managed to overwhelm the Vanguard soldiers and put a stop to the captain's suicide plan, Len Dixon had absolutely no experience when it came to piloting a starship.

The rasping multivoice returned: “Help is coming.”

He looked across the platform, beyond the catwalk, and saw Meghan Falkenberg emerging from the shadowy interior of the Minder vessel. The force field flickered back into place behind her. Like she did upon entering that maw, Meghan moved with a shuffling, lifeless gait – the kind one might expect from a puppet moving on loose marionette strings. Something different now, though. Her eyes. They glowed a shimmering blue. The three soldiers standing around the ramp noticed it too. Immediately, they raised their plasma rifles to aim at the Soltek spokeswoman. “Halt!” one of them shouted as she got to their side of the catwalk and stepped onto the landing platform. She obeyed, stopping as ordered. Then she tilted her head to the left and motioned vaguely with her right hand. Startled looks on their faces, two guards turned on each other and fired point blank, right in the face. The third put the barrel under his chin and vaporized his head. Dixon shouted in horror, then rolled off the edge of the ramp and scurried underneath. He doubted it would do him much good, but it might buy him a little time.

Time? Dixon smirked at the futility of the concept. He was a dead man no matter what. If Panderyn blew the reactor: Dead. If Panderyn didn't: Dead. The poison would see to that. So what if this Minder-possessed woman killed him sooner rather than later?

He crawled out from under the ramp to find himself looking at her shoes. He looked up at her vacant face, those empty glowing eyes.

“Follow,” she said with a voice that didn't belong to her.

“Must be crowded in there,” Dixon muttered, getting to his feet. He walked after Meghan as she ascended the ramp toward the airlock. “Look, I tried talking sense into the captain. He's beyond listening.”

“Yes,” the Minder-woman agreed.

In the engineering chamber, the captain and Corporal Brechtman were standing next to the reactor casing, facing each other, while Dokes and Adelman flanked the machinery, facing the hatchway. The guards brought their rifles up to aim at Meghan and Dixon.

“I can't figure it out myself,” Brechtman was saying to Captain Panderyn. His wounded hand was bandaged and splinted. “It should be red-lining, but somehow...” As the rifles raised, the engineer and the captain turned their attention toward the newcomers. Brechtman's mouth fell open as he noticed Meghan's eyes. The captain just seemed too distracted by the journalist's presence to catch the change to the Soltek woman.

“Dixon, I told you...” Panderyn began, but then Meghan did the head-tilt thing again. The captain pulled an energy pistol from a holster at his side, aimed it at the engineer's temple, and pulled the trigger. A flash of green-blue, the scorching of flesh, bone and brain matter, and then Brechtman's corpse thumped onto the deck beside the reactor. Dokes and Adelman watched in uncomprehending horror as their commander turned the pistol on himself, sticking the barrel against the roof of his mouth and pulling the trigger. The gun clattered on the deck before Panderyn's twitching corpse sagged against the reactor and slid to the floor.

“Serve or die,” the alien voice commanded through Meghan Falkenberg as she regarded the surviving soldiers.

They looked toward Dixon. He pointed at the dead men on the deck. “I'd agree if I were you. The Minders aren't going to let us blow them up and they're not going to let us go. We don't have any choice.”

Dokes shook his head, tears welling in his eyes as he leveled the rifle at Meghan. “I can't,” he said. “I won't.”

Her head tilted. Dokes dropped the rifle, then turned and smashed his head against the bulkhead, cracking open his skull. Adelman, rifle lowered, watched blood pooling on the deck around the dead medic's head. “I'll serve,” the private said. “Whatever you want. I...” He looked at Meghan. “Just don't do anything like that to me.”

Dixon stepped around to face Meghan Falkenberg. “So, you've got a ship with no weapons. You've got one soldier and a poisoned neurojournalist for crew. You killed off the engineer and the pilot. I can't fly this fucking thing. What's your big plan now?”

“I made it through basic starship flight training on Citadel,” Adelman said. “I don't think I can manage much that's fancy, but I can get us moving and point in the right direction.”

“That will do,” Meghan replied in the multivoice. “You will launch the Unfettered, elude the B'hiri defenses, and crash this ship into the middle of their capital city. The explosion should destroy several blocks. Casualties will number in the thousands.”

“Oh,” Dixon said. He looked at Adelman, sighing. “Guess there's no point in asking for that antidote, then.”