In his spare time, Ship Master Tuo enjoyed perusing through volumes of digitized documents his forces looted in the wake of their invasion of human space. Humans were primitive, but some of their tech displayed flashes of brilliance. Uninterrupted, they may have developed into a power rivaling the Heritin. Of course it was just as well the Heritin shattered the humans when they did. Tuo smirked. The Heritin had enough rivals.
The next document brought up by the Ship Master was labeled Top Secret. It revealed information about mind transferal experiments. The human agency conducting those experiments went by the name, Special Research.
Tuo perked with interest. These primitives had truly ventured into uncharted territory. According to what he read, at least one mind transferal experiment succeeded. Not even the Heritin could boast an achievement of that magnitude.
His interest, however, turned to a chilling discomfort at the next entry he read, dated five months into the Heritin occupation. According to the entry, typed by a Dr. Gabriel Abimbola, humans had captured a Heritin and subjected the prisoner to a mind transferal. The time and place of capture corresponded to when Tuo sent an expedition to the human home world to collect samples of raw material. The entry ended with no word on the captive’s fate.
Could it be…? Tuo pushed away from his interface console, plagued with worry. No. Not possible. But he was not entirely convinced.
An image of the storage supervisor appeared on Tuo’s interface. “Ship Master, forgive me for disturbing you, but I just completed an armaments inventory. A Class Six detonator is missing.”
Tuo thought hard. A Class Six detonator was a throb of volatile stellar energy bottled inside a dense alloy casing. It could blow a hole in the most powerful battleship…or the largest vessel reactor in space.
Tuo sprang to his feet. Mobile Dock!
Instantly forgetting the storage supervisor, Tuo sent an emergency transmission to the Dock commanding officer. He urged the evacuation of all Dock personnel. Afterward, he beamed messages to his fellow shipmasters advising them to decouple from the docking rings and clear the Dock. As the Ship Master issued a command to Bridge Side to detach the Horuk, a solitary escape craft jettisoned from the Dock’s bulging equator.
Tuo noticed the craft on his sensor and hailed it.
Caretaker Umttor’s visage blazed from Tuo’s interface. The Ship Master gazed at the image. “You are not Umttor, are you?”
“No,” said the image. “Well, most of me at least. How did you know?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tuo replied resignedly, but with a filament of defiance. “Destroying one Mobile Dock will not cripple us. We are still strong enough to obliterate what remains of your world a thousand times over. In fact, had we not been recalled to the Fleet, we would have finished your species’ annihilation.”
The person Tuo once knew as Umttor spoke in a hard, frigid tone. “My mission was never about crippling you. It was about revenge. We humans are a vindictive lot. Roast in hell, you genocidal son of a bitch.”
Mobile Dock fractured in a blinding boil of light, sending jagged shards of its hull and pieces of battleships hurtling across space.
***
Draper observed the Dock’s demise through his rear cockpit window and cried out in triumph.
Murderer, the voice condemned. You killed our people.
“Not my people,” Draper retorted. But then he thought of his comrades on the Horuk, and an unborn offspring he would never see. A gut wrenching sorrow seized him.
“I am not Heritin.” He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. “My name is Darryl Draper…”
