Confluence, p.43
Confluence, page 43
Her hand rose, and he clasped it tight.
She spoke in a raspy whisper. “Where…we?” She winced and put her other hand over the wound in her side.
“You remember Talik-1? You fired on the Daerk cruiser that jumped us.”
She cocked her head for a moment and slowly nodded.
“You saved Talik-5 and 6.”
She winced and blinked. “You had orders to leave.”
Ryan swallowed and smiled. “Yeah, well I don’t listen so good…’specially about leaving my wing woman.”
Her eyes glanced around at the destruction in the darkened room and returned to Ryan’s.
“You were captured and brought back here on this Daerk cruiser, to this detention lab.” He squinted and nodded. “Turns out they weren’t all that keen on releasing you. We had a bit of a dispute.” He motioned toward his stack of drones and the next hovering drone frozen in time. Ryan cocked his head. “Seeing this stillness in time must be strange to you. I’m not sure how you’re with me in this frozen moment.”
Eschala blinked slowly and smiled. “Not strange; I know about slip-outs.”
Dire urgency precluded additional questions in Ryan’s mind, and he nodded back toward the remaining drones. “Every fifteen seconds in real time, one travels out and detonates.” He shook his head. “Sorry I was too slow; sorry they number too many. My gun’s dead, and my strength augments are out. They’ll be coming soon.” He motioned again toward the drone cube. “They’re almost gone, and that cover is the last trick I have. We don’t have much time.” Ryan swallowed. “You deserved better…Your entire life you deserved better. I’m sorry.”
The squeeze on his hand brought Ryan’s eyes back to hers. He grinned. “I just want you to know that I came back…,” he raised his eyebrows, “for your gun.” Ryan held up her favorite pistol, the one he’d retrieved from her pack. “I’m sure you can appreciate that there’s no way I’d leave such a fantastic weapon behind.”
She closed her eyes and nodded with a bright smile.
Ryan passed the weapon, and her palm found the familiar handle. She continued to nod as she squeezed it.
He whispered, “They’re gonna overrun us, but I have an alternative.”
Ryan dug in his front pocket and held up a centuries-old Earth Force artifact. She immediately recognized the type of device and what it represented in the moment. Eschala nodded, pulled out the pin for him, and then wrapped her hand over Ryan’s holding the grenade.
He smiled. “You should know I think you’re the better brawler between us.”
Eschala beamed and spoke in a hoarse whisper, “I know.”
Ryan grinned at her and shook his head.
She pulled him closer and looked deep into his eyes. “You shouldn’t have, but thank you for coming. If it’s to be here and now, I’m honored to go with you.”
He nodded. “Me too; no regrets.” Glancing around the compartment, his eyes returned to hers. “Earth…The planet I came from was called Earth. I’m the last…the last Terran.”
While the name wasn’t familiar, his look and the reference in the past tense conveyed the personal gravity of the revelation. She nodded and gazed at him.
Ryan’s lips curled into a smile as he looked into her eyes. After a few seconds, his jaw tightened. “Miss Eschala, are you prepared to go out with me?”
She nodded. Ryan released the moment in time, and the grenade’s safety lever clanked as she let go of it. A few seconds passed without an explosion. Both gazed at the weapon with wide eyes as a small puff of smoke wafted off its top.
Ryan wheezed through flared nostrils and closed his eyes. “These do not expire.” He shook his head. “This whole goddam time it was a dud. Figures.”
A few moments later, the last cube drone exploded in the passage. The Daerk were paying attention to the cadence and recognized in moments that no additional drone ordinance was headed toward them. A half minute after that, Ryan and Eschala’s eyes caught movement as five Daerk stormed through the portal. Eschala’s arm rose steady, the large-caliber pistol sighted with a stoic eye, and fired in rapid succession. The first four combatants dropped from perfect headshots just inside the door, and the fifth snarled while it made evasive movements. Eschala continued to fire while lying in Ryan’s lap, but her rounds either missed or hit the beast’s shielded torso. As she held fire with her final round, the creature roared and sailed down toward them. One last well-aimed pop rendered the beast lifeless, and Ryan pushed into the falling body, causing it to land with a dull thump on the deck beside them.
With no more rounds, Eschala closed her eyes and cradled the weapon close to her upper heart. Ryan’s hands moved quick over the lifeless Daerk, searching for weapons. His head rose and froze at the first sound of an electric motor. Ryan’s eyes grew wide as the noise grew louder.
A second later, another four-wheeled Daerk drone weapon bounced over bodies in the doorway as it screamed into the compartment and popped just inside. As many small bombs launched into the air, Ryan’s torso swung away from the dead Daerk and folded over Eschala’s body. As the cluster of explosive rounds detonated, Ryan felt peppering points of pressure on his back, and a solid shove displaced his right shin inward. After the blast, he sat up with blotto eyes and almost tipped over backward. He didn’t realize he was going over until his torso came to an abrupt halt. Looking down, he saw the glint of Eschala’s pistol lying on the ground and both her hands firmly grasping his collar. He glanced at her eyes before looking at his right leg. A crimson spot on the fabric was expanding, and his leg tingled.
Eschala turned toward the doorway before looking back to Ryan. “They’re coming.”
He nodded. “I tried to—”
Ryan swayed as the cruiser shuddered and rumbled. Eschala looked up as another series of distant booms caused the floor to shake. The cruiser’s shielding was down, and the hull was taking heavy fire.
A smile blossomed on Ryan’s face as he mumbled, “Company traffic.” His head bobbed as his eyes traveled back to Eschala’s. “Another approaches with the ending accord.” He nodded as thoughts of Lysander standing in Vi’s control room came to mind. He saw a faraway moment just after bringing Rex back to life; peering at his own reflection off the ship’s skin, he’d jumped seeing the reflection wave back. The echoes of a century of banter with Violet caused his eyes to close tight. “But with the accord comes a terrible price.”
A noise from the outside passage returned his attention. From the corner of his eye, Ryan saw an object sail through the doorway. The exterior attack on the cruiser had caused the Daerk in the passageway to escalate their assault with a tactical grenade designed to combat an entire squad. Midair, the smart bomb created a vectored vacuum that violently pulled localized and unsecured mass inward before detonating a second outward explosive. The effect was powerful enough to draw Ryan and Eschala four feet off the deck before the secondary blast slammed them back. The last Terran groaned motionless on the floor, and thirty seconds after the first, the Daerk tossed in another and another. Every half minute they pitched additional ordnance into the compartment.
Two and a half explosive minutes into the meat grinder, Ryan woke in a fog with his cheek mashed on the floor. The grenades had stopped, and his eyes opened to the deck stretching off and away. For several seconds, he heard heavy gunfire and explosions echoing from the hall passage. All at once it ceased, and layers of smoke hung in the ensuing quiet.
Ryan labored, lifting his head, and glossy cow eyes rolled around looking for Eschala; her body lay near, motionless. With numb limbs, he struggled across the floor toward her and grunted as he stretched out an arm to touch her. As Ryan’s dull fingers made contact, his mind traveled back to the moment when she’d put a hand over his in the park. He rolled her tangled body, searching for her hand. As he grasped it in the dim light, he didn’t see the dried blood or soot, only perfection. He recalled the night she had dragged him down a royal passage and the revelation seeing the warrior’s perfect fingers.
Ryan wheezed through quickening shallow breaths as blood pooled deeper in his lungs. He pressed her palm into his cheek as he struggled to keep his eyes open. With a hoarse whisper, he called to her. “Eschala? Eschala?” In the darkened compartment, he couldn’t see if she was breathing, but her touch still felt warm. Ryan panted for more air. “It’s OK…if you need a rest here.” He swallowed hard. “We can rest here. It’s OK.”
Ryan’s mind played back through moments with Eschala in the palace utility room, just after she’d stitched an arm and comforted a severed presence. He recalled the electricity as the beauty in a formal gown stepped closer into him. Her touch, her scent, and the aura of her presence were some kind of powerful magic; he recalled the sense of reanimation that had carried him that night through the loss of connection with the old man.
A cool tingle up and down the right side of Ryan’s body preceded shaking and momentary seizing. He slowed his breathing in an effort to free himself from the clenching cycle. With a light, spinning head, Ryan’s mind focused on playful memories full of Eschala’s laughter. He smiled through choppy breath and focused on the feeling of her hand on his cheek.
Ryan turned his shivering head into soot-covered lips and spoke into her hand. “My queen…I—”
Shadow movement in the outside passage caught his eye, and he looked toward the open portal. With groan and gurgle, Ryan struggled to sit up and block Eschala’s body behind him. He squinted into the beams of Dahrlyian’s light streaming in through the lab entry as crashing blood pressure caused his head to wobble. Something was approaching the portal doorway.
After centuries of skirmishes, Ryan knew the fog growing in his mind all too well, and he knew how near he was to losing consciousness. He grunted and smacked his left thigh, summoning adrenaline in the fight to stay present. Glaring to the side, he spotted a two-foot-long piece of structural wreckage that looked to be some kind of metallic rod.
Defiant to the last, he reached for the ad hoc weapon, but his brain was moving faster than his limbs. Ryan’s torso toppled over, and he crashed down onto his forearms. As he wheezed with shallow breaths, a stream from his mouth painted the deck in a crimson spatter. His head turned to the side toward the opening as a silhouette eclipsed the light. Straining through the glare, he saw the outline of a short biped creature. In his final conscious moments, he thought the sight strange; although he couldn’t be sure, it looked as though the creature was wielding pistols…two big-ass pistols. Ryan’s eyelids grew heavy, and he succumbed, collapsing motionless to the deck.
The six-pupiled creature in the doorway sighed and huffed as it surveyed the two motionless masses. It spoke into a device on its wrist. “I’ve found them. Prepare medical bay for trauma.”
Note from the author
Hello!
Thank you for reading Endpoint: Confluence. I sincerely hope you enjoyed it.
Please follow me on social media and check my website for updates on the continuing saga. Drop me a line (jw@jwgriffin.us) if you have thoughts on this series or if you’d like a copy of the first chapter in the next book.
Also, if you enjoyed this story, it would be a tremendous help if you could rate and/or provide a review.
* * *
Thank you and may Dvarah look upon you…JW
About the Author
J.W. Griffin has often gazed up into the starry night and imagined a chance meeting someday in an off-world cantina.
With a penchant for otherworldly adventure, he is an avid scuba diver and former air cargo captain. Interests in anthropology and religion propelled him through a B.A. from Lewis and Clark College. He draws from these interests and writes with a desire to capture moments that transcend basic human instinct.
J.W. Griffin currently resides in Oregon with his family and two rowdy Bouvier des Flandres.
To find out more please visit his website:
* * *
jwgriffin.us
* * *
You can also connect with JW on the following social media:
Copyright © 2021 J.W. Griffin.
* * *
The right of J.W. Griffin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
All rights reserved.
* * *
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author, except in cases of brief quotations embodied in reviews or articles. It may not be edited, amended, lent, resold, hired out, distributed or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s written permission.
Permission can be obtained from www.jwgriffin.us
* * *
This book is a work of fiction. Except in the case of historical fact, names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
* * *
ISBN: 978-1-7336784-9-0
* * *
Cover design, illustration & interior formatting: Mark Thomas / Coverness.com
J.W. Griffin, Confluence
