The level of deception which Drusilla had designed was far more intense than Harry could have ever imagined. She ordered him to record not one, but two messages to Earth. One now, and one to remain on an automated state of readiness in the Odyssey’s computer banks. Both were complete fabrications blaming the Darla for luring them to their deaths. While certain information was factual, such as the number of remaining crew, and their experiences within the Expanse, Drusilla was trying to create something that was foolproof. Blaming the Darla would take suspicion away from her, whilst providing a legitimate enemy with a grudge to bear that was entirely believable. It would also instil fear into those who saw the messages, that hope of rescue was gone, creating the conditions she desired for whatever lay ahead.
But it went even further than that. She had falsified crew logs typed out and randomly redacted sections, creating the illusion of some kind of paranoid conspiracy on board the ship, again leading to the belief that the Darla were to blame. It soon became very clear that Drusilla had not been planning this for years, she’d been planning it for decades.
It took six days for everything to fall into place, and prepare the Odyssey for its next journey. In that time, the remaining crew had been individually isolated in crew quarters, while Harry was chained to his chair on the bridge under constant watch. As he glanced over to where Lieutenant Joshua Knight’s body had fallen, he felt a pang of sadness in his core. They had become a family over the last nine years. Now they had lost one of their own. And it hurt like hell. He could only imagine how hard Teale was finding it having watched her partner executed just to prove a point. Harry wasn’t even sure what they had done with his body. With a stealthy shuffle, Drusilla was beside him, inches from his face.
“It’s time, Harry. Our journey is complete, and there is somebody you and your friends need to meet.”
Before Harry could say anything, his chains were unlocked, and he was grabbed by two men who hauled him upright and dragged him off the bridge. He struggled against his captors as they carried him through the ship, but they were too strong, and he too weak.
“Where are you taking me?” he yelled at the men. “Where are we going?”
One of the men delivered a swift fist to his stomach, and Harry doubled over.
“Shut the fuck up!”
When Harry looked up, he saw the large doors to the cargo bay opening, and inside, all of his remaining crew were huddled together. The two men launched Harry into the room, and he landed on his shoulder, exacerbating the knife wound which although healed with a med kit, still ached substantially. The two men then turned, and left, the doors closing behind them and a forcefield appearing over the doors to prevent escape.
Teale was the first to rush over and check on the Admiral.
“Sir, are you alright?” she asked, gently trying to prop him up into a sitting position.
He motioned to her that he could manage, and tapped his hand against her arm. A look of unspoken apology was passed between the two, but again, the grieving could happen later. He knew Teale had more reason to live than some of the others, and he would make sure of it.
“Where is Captain Dresden?” he asked, coughing sharply as he spoke the words.
Teale did not answer immediately. She looked down at the floor, before bringing her gaze off to the left. Harry followed the motion of her head, and saw near the wall opposite, there was what looked like a medical stretcher, and Ensign Colbeck was stood over it. Teale found her words.
“Drusilla didn’t like her attitude… so they made an example of her.”
Panic and rage swirled in Harry’s gut like a maddening tempest of emotions, and he fought through the pain in his own body and launched himself towards the doctor. When he got there, his entire body froze.
Captain Kelly Dresden had been destroyed.
Her hair was mangled, knotted and entirely consumed with her own blood, and in several places appeared to have been torn from her scalp. Her right eye was gone, her left swollen shut. Her nose had clearly been broken and sat at a jarring angle on her face, and both cheeks were swollen, blackened and sporting several gashes that Harry suspected had come from Drusilla’s blade.
A blanket was covering her body from the neck down, but by some miracle, Harry saw she was breathing. He turned to Ensign Colbeck, urging him to tell him the full diagnosis of the woman he had come to love. Reluctantly, the doctor filled him in.
“Apart from the damage to her face that you can see, she has a punctured lung, six broken ribs, internal bruising, an irregular heartbeat, seven broken fingers, and one broken wrist, and a shattered left ankle. I’m excellent at what I do, Harry, but without my equipment, all I can do is keep her breathing and out of pain.”
Harry touched Colbeck’s shoulder, his other hand over his mouth, unable to tear his eyes away from Kelly’s traumatised figure. But there was more.
“Harry, they took her tongue.”
He knew that it was likely going to cost him his own health, and he knew that a feeling so strong and powerful would be felt by Drusilla on the bridge, but he no longer had control over anything. He screamed in anger and fury, and ran his fist directly through a nearby glass container, sending broken shards everywhere, slicing his hand open. But Harry continued, he tore storage units from the wall, and launched them across the bay. He smashed a control panel on the nearby anti-grav station and tore the wires out, sparks shooting into the air. The crew watched on, every set of eyes filled with sympathy and empathy for their commanding officer. Drusilla had quite literally taken everything from him. All he had left was his crew, and his ship.
Collapsing to the ground in a heap, sobbing into his hands as the blood dripped from them onto the cargo bay floor, Harry was a broken man. Drusilla had said that humans don’t break. She was wrong. And here was the proof. But just as quickly as Harry had lost control, he gained a moment of distinct clarity. His eyes scanned the doorway. Sure enough, the communications panel had not been covered by the forcefield. He staggered over to it, ripped off the top panel, and began unplugging wires and computer chips, reinserting them in different locations, until the unmistakable sound of a system powering up could be heard. A smile of determination spread over Harry’s face.
“Computer?” he yelled into the vast open space.
“Awaiting commands.”
“Open a channel to the bridge.”
* * *
Drusilla watched eagerly on the viewscreen as the Odyssey cleared the perimeter of the Saraswathi Nebula, the golden strands vanishing from view, leaving nothing but darkness before them.
“Stine, are the dampeners in place?” she asked her trigger happy deputy.
“Up and running. The effects of the expanse should be nullified until we reach our destination.”
Drusilla smiled. She had not personally ventured into the expanse, but the stories of what lay inside of it gave her cause to ensure they would not fall victim to the same fates as previous travellers. She was now so close to her final destination. Her revenge was in reach. All she had to do, was get there. As she wiped dried blood from her small, white blade, she could not help but think back to when she first met Harry Ransome. Despite everything, and her definite influencing of his mind, she had enjoyed spending time with him. He was a warrior. Of course he had been trained to become one, whereas she had needed to fight and attack in order to become the power she was now. But there was a small part of her that had genuine feelings for him. After all, was that not the reason she had murdered his family? So that he would be hers, and hers alone? That same reasoning had caused her to personally mutilate Captain Kelly Dresden. Harry belonged to her and nobody else. Why take such action if there was not more beneath the surface, beneath the vengeance, beneath the blackened heart?
Unfortunately for Drusilla, her thoughts were interrupted by an unauthorised communication from the very man she was conflicted over.
“Drusilla, you fucking bitch. I know you can hear me, and I know you can feel this, so listen to me very carefully.”
Harry’s voice was almost a growl, and Drusilla could indeed feel the rage and the pain in her very soul, such was its potency. Ordinarily such a strong bond would give her unbridled ecstasy. But not this time. This time, she felt afraid.
“You have taken my family. You have taken my home, and you have taken my people. You have butchered the woman I love, and murdered members of my crew. But you know what? You were right. When push comes to shove, humans don’t break. And Drusilla? I’m coming for you. I’m going to slice my way through these scumbags you call a crew. I’m going to free my people, and I’m going to wrap my hands around your throat and squeeze the life out of your body until you’re on the very cusp of death! And as I watch you die, I’m going to take your knife, and the very last thing you will see is me cutting your heart from your body and holding it in front of you as its blood drips onto the floor! It ends HERE!”
The channel went dead, and the bridge was filled with silence. Drusilla’s jaw was actually trembling. She was not fearful of threats and vendettas. She was terrified because she felt every word that came from Harry Ransome’s lips. And what she felt was the truth. Harry was coming for her.
“Stine, get down to the cargo bay. Kill them all!”
“But Drusilla, you said we needed them-”
“I SAID KILL THEM ALL!”
Stine ran for the doors at the back of the bridge, but before he could get there, the ship jolted violently, as if hit by weapons fire.
“What was that?” asked one of the other men.
“No idea, some kind of energy surge within the ship,” answered another.
Then there was a loud clunking noise, the floor of the bridge vibrating underneath them. Every light went out, and every console lost power.
“Wh- what- what is happening?” Drusilla whispered under her breath.
Nobody answered.
“Stine? Report!”
Again, silence.
Drusilla’s eyes bulged, and even in the darkness, she could make out the outlines of the consoles in front of her. But there were no people in the seats. Suddenly, there was a rush of air behind her. She spun on the spot, her knife clutched tightly in her right hand.
“Who’s there?” she demanded.
A low, guttural growl emerged from somewhere in the darkness, and Drusilla thought she saw a glimpse of red eyes off to her left. She darted forward, but her feet found fresh air, missing the steps down from the command chair in the dark, and she fell onto her front, hard, the blade skittering away from her. Groaning, she rolled onto her back, and hovering directly above her, was the body of every single one of her men, each being held up by something protruding from their chest. The only source of illumination was a rifle torch belonging to Stine, which was jerking violently back and forth as his body spasmed. Rivers of blood flowed down from above, coating Drusilla like water. It filled her eyes, her nose, her mouth, and as she tried to scramble away, it only made her fall back down, this time cracking the side of her head on one of the metal steps. She saw stars and everything swirled around her.
The overwhelming sound of an alarm claxon shattered the silence, and Drusilla threw her hands up to her ears to try and shield her mind from the noise. The siren was then joined by the computer voice.
“Warning, emergency vessel decompression in thirty seconds.”
This seemed to elicit a swift response from the alien creatures, who shot back into the hole they had managed to create in the ceiling, dragging along with them the bodies of Drusilla’s crew.
“Warning, emergency vessel decompression in twenty seconds.”
Drusilla had no idea where she was, her vision still blurred by blood and her head injury. Her hand hit a glowing control panel, and a series of pods came down from the ceiling. The decompression cycle had released the emergency preservation order, and cryo-pods were now descending.
“Warning, emergency vessel decompression in ten seconds.”
Drusilla had no idea what was happening, her body seemingly on autopilot. She climbed into one of the pods, completely unaware of her surroundings, the pod sealing itself automatically once she was secured. Inside, a separate automated voice addressed her directly.
“Occupant, do you wish to initiate emergency extraction procedure?”
The side of Drusilla’s head was now swollen significantly, and she had lost much blood from the head wound. She could not tell if she was imagining things, hallucinating, or already dead. Somehow, she managed to utter the word, “Yes.”
With a violent burst of speed, the pod was ripped from the bridge, and emergency hatch closing behind it, and launched into the empty space beyond the ship. The engines kicked in, and the pod soared at incredible speed back towards the Saraswathi Nebula. As the Odyssey became nothing but a tiny speck on the viewscreen of the pod, Drusilla lost consciousness and everything went black.