part0005

His chest tightened, and Craze’s hand twitched, the thick pads of his burly fingers knocking against his muscular thigh. Either the new weapon would work and the war would with the Quassers would never happen, or it would fail, and Craze would die along with the Backworlds.

The Backworlds had to survive. He had become the most hated man in the galaxy for negotiating a pact with one enemy to defeat a more despicable one. All to give his people a chance.

The tenuous alliance with the Foreworlds had produced a plasma-based EMP, a weapon calculated to hobble the minds of their common enemy, a race of aliens with no conscience—living, sentient ships known to Backworlders as the Quassers. If the Quassers’ telepathic abilities were overcome, their insidious mind control would end. If so, their defeat would become a thousandfold easier. Then Craze could return to his normal life—a nobody barkeep eking out a living on the edge of the known galaxy instead of envoy to a questionable ally.

One cloud-like Quasser ship lurked outside the view panels of the well-armed cruise liner. The lonesome Quasser had broken off from its pack gathered beyond the star systems of human expansion and had been picked up by tracking. The alliance of Backworlds and Foreworlds reacted quickly to take advantage. Too quick? Craze wouldn’t put it past the Quassers to have devised some sick trap. Everything the aliens did smacked of a twisted, murderous psychology, a race priding itself on immense cruelty and no mercy.

Every precaution had been taken. The weapon had been placed on a separate vessel surrounded by warships. The fleet had been surrounded by a minefield. A second barrier of mines protected the spacecraft on which Craze and other diplomats observed the effectiveness of the plasma-based EMP. A proven defense against the enemy had been activated to its most powerful setting: a device which dampened the Quassers’ mind control. A secondary fleet waited in a neighboring star system. Force fields were up. Scanners had been set to full sensitivity.

Yet Craze didn’t feel safe. He stared at the Quasser with an intensity that should send it into the next universe. His efforts only produced a headache.

Made up of spheres, the orbs of the enemy vessel moved in a constant, hazy blur, almost a figment of the imagination. Craze knew it wasn’t; the sentient ship was a nightmare. The Quassers hurled death and misery on all who encountered them, doing horrible, unthinkable things. The alien ship couldn’t live. Nor the other eight hundred forty-seven like it.

On the navigation console beside Craze on the command deck, the clock ticked down. In fifteen seconds, fate would be decided. He had sacrificed everything for this one moment of “maybe.” The “maybe” had to be a victory.

The air grew thick. The acrid scent of fear wafted around the deck, planting itself in Craze’s wide nose. Silence pounded against his sensitive ear holes, despite being surrounded by twenty-six people.

On one side of Craze stood Ambassador Sanjy Strom, the Foreworld liaison, the person with whom he had brokered the filaments of the fragile new alliance. At six feet and two inches tall, she came close to matching Craze’s height. Her long, flat face held onto a stoic expression, and her steel-blue gaze didn’t waver from the Quasser, daring the alien to defy her. Yet her fingers flexed over and over.

The twitch over her brow hinted at secrets. Craze studied her, as worried about the Foreworlders as the Quassers. He couldn’t imagine how the new weapon could be modified to be used against the Backworlds, but he didn’t have the Foreworlds’ capacity for cruelty. Time and again, he attempted to think like them, and time and again he failed. Whatever the Foreworlders planned, it wouldn’t happen today.

One of Craze’s closest friends stood on his other side, Dactyl. Two of Dactyl’s elite unit were with him: Tria and Midge Marlin. They’d been summoned as another precaution. The three of them could resist the Quassers’ mind control. For an extra layer of safety, the rest of Dactyl’s crew had been shut away in isolation chambers. If all went wrong, they’d take over.

Sweat beaded on Dactyl’s broad forehead, and his long, brown hair had matted where he kept swiping. Like everyone else, a heavy knot pinched together his brows.

“Do you sense anythin’ from it?” Craze whispered.

Dactyl shook his anvil-like head. He had once been enslaved by a Quasser and had a telepathic connection with the evil things. “Nothing, which is worrisome. It should be thinking something. There’s no way it doesn’t know we is here.”

Craze had expected bad news, but hoped for his luck to turn. The universe had been dishing shit at him since his pa threw him out of the house. Six years ago. Seemed longer. Craze would have bet two lifetimes had passed since then. He rubbed at the stiffening muscles of his clenched jaw, failing at putting his faith in the firepower around him.

Out the view panels, enormous warships peppered the black ether of space. Their hulls blended with the nothingness, adding their vigilant witness to the most momentous event, the first shot of a new war. Smaller vessels hung farther back, ready to zip away and give warning to the secondary fleet.

Craze slid his hand into his pants pocket and clutched onto a round, metal badge. It was dented and pitted, badly used. Orange letters on a faded blue background read Carry On . He checked the status of the mind-control blocking device one more time.

The lieutenant manning the command console licked his lips every half second, eager to strike. His complexion was the same shade of olive as Craze’s, but he couldn’t be more than twelve. The Foreworlders insisted young people had faster responses, and speed was crucial in war.

“We need every possible benefit,” Ambassador Strom had said. No matter how many drams of his finest malt Craze had poured down her throat, she wouldn’t change her position on the matter.

His stores of handcrafted malt neared empty, but that wasn’t why Craze had given in. He had traded the point to attain critical research the Foreworlds had amassed on the physiology of folks immune to the Quassers’ mind control, yet the idea of children serving on the frontlines would never be okay. When they had nothing left to squabble about, he’d bring it up again.

The lone Quasser closed in on a dim planet at the edge of Backworlds’ territory that had in its orbit the unsavory moon of Wism. Cutthroats, traitors, and dastards populated the dark moon, which was always in the shadow of its planet. The murky planet had a sad ring, as if the globe had expelled its last breath in a wimpy effort at generating interest.

It had been six years since Craze had visited Wism, and on that sad moon four newly-made friends had become his family. One of those four was Dactyl. Craze took a step closer to his friend and couldn’t help but think warmly of Wism despite not wanting to set foot on it. No one sane wanted to dock on Wism.

The alien moved slowly, sometimes stopping and shifting direction, but never in a way to indicate acknowledgement of the allied ships nearby.

“It’s not behaving as it ought.” Ambassador Strom wore a jumpsuit the color of shadows. What good would it do? If the Quasser attacked, there’d be nowhere to hide. Everyone would be jettisoned out into the nothing to die among the uninspiring rocks of the Wism system until some future race found their bodies and the awful Quassers. Then the cycle of war and death would begin anew.

“No, it’s not, but we took every precaution.” Craze said it mostly to reassure himself. It was what he hadn’t thought of that worried him.

Five other Backworlders clumped beside Dactyl and his squadmates. Two were in the diplomatic corps with Craze. The other three were important BAA, Backworlds Assembled Authorities , officials. Around Strom were twelve important Foreworlders—battle tacticians, engineers, admirals, and specialists in bio extinction. Craze edged away from those folks. They were the ones who had created plagues and other dastardly weapons to annihilate Backworlders. It didn’t matter they had turned their focus to the Quassers.

The countdown reached three. Craze held his breath, his hopes cresting. They rolled in his mouth in a dry heap.

Two… one… The massive cannon mounted on the neighboring ship sent the plasma-based EMP toward the Quasser, encapsulating it, stopping it. The Quasser froze in orbit around Wism and lost altitude. The orbs of its odd hull ceased to gyrate. Not one flicker.

“Dead?” Craze gripped his thigh, and his living hair coiled into tight curls, pinching his scalp, slanting his dark eyes. “Did it work?” His whisper cracked in a dry croak.

“There are no readings either way, Envoy Craze.” The boy lieutenant had quit licking his lips, a smile hovering at their corners.

Craze blinked, and a warm shiver drummed in his chest. His fist balled and he shook it at the window. “Take that you sons of shits—”

The spheres of the Quasser pulsed. Spots glowed in its orbs. The bright spots left the Quasser and zoomed at the Foreworld and Backworld ships. The sparks flashed in glaring brilliance, roaring the Quasser’s commands—mind control on radioactive steroids.

The alien invaded Craze’s thoughts, his heartbeat, the breath in his lungs. The boy lieutenant set the ship’s self-destruct. Craze laughed.

A Foreworld diplomat ripped wires out from the science station and wrapped them around Craze’s neck. He didn’t fight, and his tongue formed the most awful words. “I want you to kill me.”