Massoud (Massoud Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  “We are too close to the ionosphere. The pods will burn up. The maneuvering thrusters will buy them some time.”

  “The thrusters are useless. We have to go!” She tugged on the captain’s sleeve, turning him towards her, only to discover a face suffused with insanity.

  “Those bastards. Throw every weapon you have at them, Massoud. They will not destroy my crew!” he seethed.

  “It won’t do any good. Look at that ship—it’s ten times our size. Captain, listen to me.” She used both hands to pull him to face her as she stated bluntly, “We have to go now, or we’ll die. There’s nothing more to do.”

  “I will not leave until the crew is clear. I will not!”

  Massoud instantly changed her approach, and addressed the ship, “Command System, how many personnel are still on board?”

  “Two. Capt. Teloc and Commander Massoud” was the crisp reply.

  “See, we can go now, Captain. Let’s go.” He hesitated, so she declared, “I’m not going if you don’t go. I’m the crew. If you want to save me, you have to leave.”

  She gripped one of his sleeves and yanked him towards the exit, dragging his significant mass ineffectively behind her. Then something clicked in his brain and he moved ahead, towing her impatiently along the route.

  “Command System, status of escape pods on deck one,” Massoud shouted. It was quiet on the ship except for ominous swooshing behind them, but it would have been inhuman not to shout in such a circumstance.

  “Four escape pods have ejected. One remains and is serviceable.”

  “Go! Go! Go!” Massoud yelled unnecessarily. The captain’s pace was rapid, and he was all but lifting her off her feet as she clung to his sleeve. Arriving at the pod, he pushed her in, following feet first, swinging himself from the grab bar, pulling the hatch shut and sealing it. Massoud started the undocking sequence while simultaneously, and vainly, she tried to strap herself into the impact seat. The pod didn’t release immediately. “Start rocking back and forth,” she ordered, remembering an old-timer’s tale. The captain complied and, with the first movement. the pod released, propelled by compressed gas away from the Constance whose hull was fatefully fractured. The little ship was popping compartment after compartment into space, each a silent and fatal explosion. The Constance was helpless in the face of the unmerciful laws of physics which gave her no clemency on the basis of her good character.

  Massoud had no leisure to watch her beloved friend’s death throes. The pod was rotating violently and was indeed too close to the atmosphere for safe maneuvering. Their progress was a hurtling, sickening, abusive tumble. “Pod, use air jets to eliminate roll!” Massoud allowed the computer to determine the best way to make that happen. Her brain was a jumble. The precise voice of the automated systems responded. “To release sufficient air, the air supplies on board would be reduced to 1.35 days’ supply.”

  “If we don’t reach that planet safely, we won’t need air.” Massoud, still shouting, realized that the pod computer might not recognize an implicit command. “Use air jets to eliminate roll, now.”

  The pod steadied within moments. Massoud was finally captured by the impact seat, and she looked over to see the captain already secured. He was wild-eyed but, thankfully, appeared to have enough sense to function. They were both bruised, but neither thought of that as they hit the atmosphere. They were mesmerized by the blossoming glow at the viewing port and the warmth coming from behind them, seeping through their seats and their uniforms. Training told them that the pod would grow hot when it entered an atmosphere—but wasn’t this too hot? How bad had their altitude and trajectory been? Why hadn’t the pod released immediately? Was there damage to it? Surely, this was too hot. They had left the ship too late.

  The massive acceleration pressed every fiber of their bodies into the impact seats as they travelled downwards. Unimaginable forces, usually disguised by dampening systems, forced muscle askew, made eyes weep, and compressed organs. The sensation of being ground apart was suddenly relieved when the pod finally deployed friction flutes, slowing the descent, and allowing the hull membrane to cool a little. Still with a sensation of incredible speed, they shot downward, the friction flutes slowing them incrementally until their rate of travel seemed civilized. Massoud finally allowed herself to think, We’re going to make it, and as the thought formed, they hit the surface of the planet hard—a massive jolt even at low speed. The impact seats swelled around them, cushioning them from further injury.

  Silence followed, just as shocking as everything that had preceded it.

  Massoud could hear her own heart pounding and lungs gasping, could see the lighted displays in the little pod, but there was nothing else beyond that. The rest of the universe had blipped out of existence. Gradually, her breathing moderated, and her mind started to function. She felt gravity, higher than that simulated on the ship. There was air fingering the outside of the pod. She sensed the pod was grounded and connected to the solidity of a planet. The jigsaw pieces of her mind started to fit together—not fast enough—but she willed them into place. Then a connection was made, and she acted instinctively, unstrapping from the seat and hitting the stop button for the automated beacon. The only ship able to observe their beacon was the aggressor. She sat back, spent and empty. At this moment, she was literally incapable of doing more.

  Gradually, an ache made itself known in her left wrist. She became aware of a soreness in her shoulder. Feeling pain was a luxury she could now afford. She held up her left arm to examine the wrist in the weak light from the console screens, which glowed inadequately in the moonless night of the planet. She was unwilling to turn on the main lights and be more observable to her enemies than she already was—a warm-blooded animal in a technological shell on an undeveloped planet without indigenous fauna.

  Her injured wrist, her arm, was something separate from herself, swollen and painful. She moved each finger in turn, wondering at the ability of her disconnected mind to make such movement happen. And then she had an unremarkable thought. No bones broken, perhaps a sprain. It was such a rational thought, connected to existence as it should be, not to the hellish place it had suddenly become. She then tested her shoulder, to feel it protest at the painful motion, but ultimately it complied with her instructions. It was badly bruised, maybe strained, nothing more. She didn’t remember getting hurt. Perhaps it had happened when she’d been flung around the tumbling pod. Why hadn’t she noticed her injuries then? This question reassured her, because it was connected to ordinary thinking. She began to feel that her body belonged to her again, that the shattered little pieces of her identity were coming together into a whole. With the return to reason, she began to act.

  “Captain, what happened? I really didn’t get a chance to find out what was going on.” She turned to her companion to find him hulking and sullen, like a stranger. “Captain,” she tried more firmly, “you have to listen to me and answer my questions. Report! What happened?”

  “The smaller moon crested the horizon and they popped out from behind. Our sensors were inadequate to detect them earlier. We activated shields, but they were useless against a ship like that. Their weapons’ fire came at the same time as their stupid hail. They hit Engineering. Took out the engines. The hull was compromised. We had to evacuate.”

  “But who was it? Banditos?”

  “I told you they hailed,” he spat out the words. “It was those fucking Xenos. Who else hails and then fires? Those bastards, they killed my ship. I hate them. I hate them. I hate them.”

  With these last words, he started punching his console viciously, again and again, his face livid, contorted and harsh. Massoud recoiled, her mind almost shutting down again. The horror was not over. She was flung from one nightmare into another. She was trapped in a cage with a violent madman, a nasty twin to her sober captain.

  His rage subsided. The punches slowed and then stopped. He leaned back and breathed deeply for a few moments. “I will get worse,” he said in a voice
somewhat like his own. “There is little you can do. I will be calmer after a violent outburst but will deteriorate again.” He reached forward to open the stowage compartment in front of him, tugging on the door to release the mechanism bent by his pummeling. He handed the object he retrieved to Massoud.

  “You must use it against me. Set it to kill. There is no point in stunning me. My adrenaline levels are too high. I assure you, I will attack you. You are not safe. This is the only way. You should have left me on the ship. That was my intent—but you would not have left without me. Now it needs to be finished.”

  Once again, her brain was lagging the action. Massoud spluttered, “I’m not going to kill my captain. No...no!” Her eyes were mesmerized by the console surface, its resilient material unable to reform after his beating. Her skull was pathetically brittle by comparison. Danger occupied every breath she inhaled.

  “There has to be another way. I can’t kill you. I can’t kill anyone in cold blood. What kind of person do you think I am?” she pled. “It’s your idea. You do it, if you’re serious...What am I saying?” She placed a hand over her mouth.

  “I do not have the self-control. It does not serve my self-interest. You must do it to protect yourself. Do it now, before I lose all control. I won’t fight back now, but later I will. I will overpower you. You are weak. You have a right to protect yourself. No-one will blame you. No-one.”

  Massoud looked at the weapon in her right hand trained unsteadily on the captain, once again feeling that her extremities were not part of herself. She struggled to find her own reason and develop her own logic. With an extreme effort, she conventionalized the situation by applying the discipline of problem-solving.

  “Okay. Okay. Let’s not run ahead of ourselves. To make a good decision, I need to understand what’s going on. Tell me everything you can about what’s happening to you. Anything at all that might help.”

  “You are hesitating. You do not have sufficient time for that. I want to save my crew—so I do not want to do you harm, but I will. I would die to save my crew, so let me die.”

  “Captain! Listen to me. If you want me to do what you ask, convince me it’s necessary. Tell me everything you can. Convince me. Give me lots of details. I will need them. I will really, really need them.”

  The man who was once Capt. Teloc growled his impatience. “It’s the myash. Every male Gnostian suffers it at some point during his life, usually four or five times, before he reaches old age. Our emotions are unbridled. Out of control. I am insane, and I am very angry. Very, very angry.”

  “Captain, focus! Tell me more.”

  “It is happening too often to me,” he cried. “It comes from living with you humans with all your outbursts and smells and irrationalities. It is unbalancing me,” he exclaimed angrily. “Some men withdraw into themselves, but I get angry and dangerous. It is your fault. It is all your fault.” He eyed her viciously.

  “No, Captain, it’s not,” Massoud was firm and intent. “It’s just a natural process we have to deal with...somehow. What do they do on Gnost when this happens?”

  “We go to a kind of monastery—a retreat. We are incarcerated, and the monks take care of us to atone for their own crimes. There are drugs and mental exercises...”

  “Mental exercises. What kind…?”

  He cut her off sharply. “They don’t work. They never have. They just reflect the Gnostian obsession with mental discipline. How can mental exercises work against this?”

  “So, what does work? There has to be something other than violence. Why does violence calm you down, temporarily at least? What’s the mechanism? Maybe we could replicate it in some way that’s not so destructive.”

  “Don’t be stupid. With the resources we have in a pod! That idiot doctor was going to pump half the ship’s pharmacy into me. There is nothing here. What can we do? I do not want to die, so kill me quickly before my mind is gone again.”

  As much as the tight quarters of the pod would allow, the captain curled up and away from her. She debated whether to let him enjoy this anxious calm or to press ahead with her questioning. Fearing further deterioration in his condition with the passage of time, she decided to proceed directly.

  “Captain,” she said gently, “tell me more.”

  She paused to consider her next question, but the captain’s piteous voice emerged from his huddled form. “It’s something about the release of intense emotions with violence. It seems to use up all of our emotional capacity—burns it out, so that we are something like ourselves for a short period until the emotions return.”

  “You mean violence does this, because it is intense?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about other intense emotions—positive emotions like joy?” she asked optimistically. “Would they work?”

  “Joy,” he roared. “Joy! Are you a fool? What is there to be joyous about? Do you know what just happened to us? The only joy I want now is to have the Xenos come hunt us down so I can tear them limb from limb. Maybe they can kill me—and you can go on your cowardly way. You don’t have the guts to do this.”

  “Actually, I don’t have the heart to do it”, she said quietly, almost to herself.

  He turned to look at her. “Of course not. You have to be everybody’s friend. You need everyone to like you. Do you want command or not? You must do what is needed Massoud. You must kill me. Are you worried that your friends will think badly of you? Would you rather they mourned you? I am giving you a chance to save yourself. Take it. Take it.”

  “No, I’ll die first.” Her hand shook as she changed the setting on the gun to stun.

  “It won’t be clean. I might torture or rape you to begin...”

  Her hand hovered over the setting, but her resolve held. She left the setting at stun.

  “Why, Massoud?”

  “Because this is not who you really are. You’re a good man. I admire you. If I destroyed who you are now, I would destroy a worthy person too. Your life or mine. If it has to be one, then...logically it should be me. I’m not important to anyone.”

  “You would sacrifice yourself...” The captain fell silent, taking slow breaths, calming himself to a degree. “There is something else that might work. It might not.”

  Massoud grasped at it. “What?”

  “Sex.”

  Massoud shrunk back.

  His voice was fractured. “Right now, I admire you very much. Very much indeed. Perhaps enough to feel a strong emotion if we...” He looked at her intensely, his hand reaching for a loosened lock of hair on her shoulder, coiling it in his fingers, fascinated by it. She could retreat no further into her seat. She still had the weapon. She could stun him, but eventually he would wake, and they would face the same problem. Could she, should she, keep him stunned for a week, when they should be moving, and doing something to better their situation? She would need to sleep. What then? Would this even work? Voluntary sex was better than rape—less damaging anyway, physically at least. It was definitely better than a cold-blooded killing. Would it work? Could she go through with it? Wouldn’t she try to break away and then all his rage would emerge and destroy her?

  His face was very close to her now, his mouth close to her neck. She realized he was smelling her, moving his nose from her neck to her ears and back again. His breath was alarmingly warm and intimate on her exposed skin. She felt a tingle where he brushed against her. Her body was alive and her mind in revolt. His lips met hers, moving gently, and she unconsciously opened her mouth to welcome him. The only words in her head, What are you doing Elizabeth, what are you doing? He pulled away, holding her face in his hands. His eyes burned into her with a shocking intensity, flickering with the anguish of the man she knew. His voice cut through her doubt, “Help me, please help me,” and she knew what she would do.

  4. Desolation

  T he spartan light of dawn filtered onto Massoud’s reclined form. She was awake but unwilling to open her eyes. She was pretending that yesterday had been a dream
—a peculiar combination of a nightmare and sex dream. The pretense was futile. She could not mistake the formed shape of the impact seat for her bunk. Of all the things that had happened, she kept returning to that which mortified her sense of self—the sex, or rather her reaction to it, which had been wanton. She squirmed uncomfortably at the memory, triggering discomfort in her shoulder, pain in her wrist, and soreness between her legs. The painkiller the captain had given her last night had worn off, but the self-forming splint, which he had tenderly placed on her wrist, helped still.

  It disturbed her to consider how deeply frustrated she had been—so deeply that she had responded to a madman’s touch. More than responded, she had demanded more from him than he could deliver, even in his impassioned state. She could not deny that if he touched her again, she would respond in the same way, out of control and wrapped up in a kind of insanity of her own. “This is not who I am,” she tried to believe, despite the evidence to the contrary. She did not want to be like this, her higher self swamped by infinitesimal hormones. She had been too long without a man. She needed to regain her self-control, but it had never been so good or so tempting.

  She opened her eyes, looking towards the other seat. The captain was gone, and Massoud felt a moment of panic, thinking he had done away with himself, found a precipice and leapt. She pulled herself up to look out the small viewing port. The captain stood within easy distance on a promontory, apparently using the viewer to examine the terrain. He appeared calm and purposeful. She relaxed back into the seat, consciously giving herself an opportunity to be quiet and still.

  Ridiculous notion! It was impossible to relax. The situation was too desperate for her mind to be tranquil. Her brain quickened to double time, listing available resources, evaluating how they could be utilized, and how long they could last. She queried the computer. The pod’s energy cells had been damaged during descent and had depleted overnight. With this damage, it was remarkable that the pod had not erupted in flames as it entered the atmosphere. Perhaps her luck was not as miserable as it seemed. However, the damaged cells now lacked sufficient charge to power long range communications.