Hellfire: Autonomy

By Simon Goodson

The worst has happened. Drake has failed his crew. They don’t know it yet, but they will soon... and when they find out things will get ugly!

As if wrestling with the life-changing disaster he’s inflicted on his crew isn’t enough, he still has the Phoenix Conglomerate and a powerful pirate fleet both pursuing him and the Dagger.

Both know the crystal in his possession is linked to bringing new hellships into existence. He would rather die than let either get their hands on it.

With darkness everywhere, Drake has only one option left... one which risks him becoming something far worse than any of his enemies. Can he resist the dark temptation? Or will he give in, dooming himself and his crew to darkness forever?

Will he survive? Grab Hellfire – Autonomy today and find out!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon Goodson
• Release date: Oct 20, 2020

Simon Goodson

Simon Goodson is the author of the massively popular and highly rated Wanderer's Odyssey science fiction series and the epic fantasy Dark Soul series.He has also written numerous short stories, trying to capture at least some of the ideas flooding through his mind.Simon fits in writing around a full time job as an IT Consultant and a hectic family life.

Book preview

Part I

On the Run…

1

Drake sat on the bridge of the Dagger, only vaguely aware of his crew’s activity around him. There was no danger, for the moment at least, and he had total faith in their ability. He’d chosen them carefully and they’d repaid his faith a dozen times during the turbulent past few weeks.

While he was barely aware of what his crew were doing at that moment they still filled his thoughts. He couldn’t stop thinking about what had been done to them. What he had done to them, however unintentionally. What they didn’t yet know had happened to them.

He’d always been able to focus carefully with his ears and eyes and become aware of his crew, aware of their moods and their activities. He’d been captain of the Dagger for many years now and over that time he'd learnt to be a good captain, one who could sense the state of his crew and knew when to nudge them and when to let them be.

Now everything had changed. Now he could truly sense the mood of his crew. If he wanted he could reach out and experience what each individual was feeling, whether they were in the same room or not.

Now he could do more than nudge them with a few words. He could reach into their minds and force them to do his will. He could do that because every member of the crew was now linked to the Dagger. More precisely, their souls were tied to him and the hellship Azimuth, the hellship Drake had renamed the Dagger when he took control of it.

None of the crew knew they’d been serving on board a hellship. At some point Drake knew he was going to have to break the news to them that they had been and that they’d now been tied to it forever. The thought of doing that, of admitting it was his actions which led to them being in that position, made him feel sick inside.

The fact it had been an accident, an unexpected side effect, felt like a flimsy excuse. It had happened while they rescued a couple of hundred children from being ritually sacrificed by a group of Dark Acolytes. That explained what had happened to the crew, but it didn’t excuse it.

If they’d been tied to any other hellship they’d be excruciatingly aware of their situation by now. The hellship would have taken great pleasure in letting them know they were under its control. Grinding their faces in that reality both directly and through its control of their minds.

But the Azimuth was not like other hellships. Not anymore. And it would never return to that behaviour as long as Drake was its captain. Not that the Azimuth was any different than its brethren. It still hated all living creatures, especially sentient beings. Nothing was going to change that. Hellships lived to hate and cause suffering, and were experts at both.

Many years before the Azimuth had taken Drake’s sister, Catherine. It took her and made her its captain, though she had no more control of the ship than any of the other poor souls it had captured.

Over time the Azimuth had worked on crushing Catherine, draining the life out of her with unspeakable suffering. Drake had managed to board the Azimuth at one point, had tried to rescue his sister, but had discovered it was all an elaborate trap.

The Azimuth had taken huge pleasure in his pain and in Catherine’s, and then it had thrown Drake off to live his life knowing his sister was suffering and he’d completely failed to save her. But not before it made him a dark promise that when Catherine died it would hunt him down and make him take her place.

Drake had continued to try and rescue Catherine, managing to buy his own small ship with the aim to trade his way to something much bigger and more dangerous. The final aim was to disable the Azimuth and rescue Catherine, but making the money to trade up to more powerful ships proved to be much harder than he’d imagined.

Before he’d reached anywhere near that point Catherine had died. The first Drake knew of her death was when the Azimuth tracked him down and dragged him off his battered freighter. The hellship had taken great pleasure in explaining how Catherine had finally died before beginning the process of ensnaring Drake’s soul and making him its captain.

But the Azimuth made a grave mistake in doing so. Though he didn’t know it himself, Drake was one of the rare humans known as immunes, those whose souls a hellship could not touch or take. Not that an immune would be safe on board a hellship. If anything hellships took more pleasure in inflicting physical torment on such people than on those it could take control of, but there would never be a link between a hellship and an immune’s mind.

The process of turning someone into a Captain went far beyond normal possession by a hellship. The Azimuth forced itself deep into Drake’s mind. Despite him being an immune a link was formed, just as it was for all hellship captains.

But being an immune changed everything. The link was formed but Drake wasn’t under the Azimuth's control. Instead the opposite happened. The Azimuth found itself bound to Drake, found itself under his control.

It had fought as hard as it could. It had raged and screamed, lashed out and even pleaded, but to no avail. For as long as Drake lived the Azimuth was stuck obeying his orders.

Drake took advantage of the situation. The Azimuth was well known as a hellship so he renamed it the Dagger. He gave the poor unfortunates the Azimuth had collected before him the blissful release of slipping away from life, then took on a fresh crew to replace them. The new crew knew nothing of the Azimuth, they simply signed on to the Dagger.

With the powerful Dagger at his command, Drake set out to fulfil a promise he’d made to himself and to his dead sister. A promise to hunt down and destroy every hellship he could find. He couldn’t save Catherine but he could stop others from suffering as she had.

He’d guessed there was a risk that over time Azimuth might manage to corrupt those who served on board so he’d decided to replace the crew regularly. If no one spent too long on board he hoped to keep them from coming to harm.

What he hadn't known, and so learnt the hard way, was that people existed who were the opposite of immunes. People who would fall to the influence of the Azimuth within days of coming on board rather than years.

Among the first batch of crew was a man named Jacobs. Jacobs proved to be one of those who were extremely susceptible to the hellship’s influence and fell to the Azimuth far quicker and far faster than Drake had believed was possible. By the time Drake realised what was happening it was already too late. Jacobs’ soul was tied to the ship. He would never again be able to leave the Dagger for more than a few days at a time.

When he found out, Jacobs took it surprisingly well. Over time Drake took great care never to use the link to force his will on him, which also helped Jacobs to cope. Even so, Drake still carried huge guilt over failing Jacobs and he’d vowed to never let it happen to anyone else.

For many years he’d succeeded. All of the crew, no matter how much he depended on them, were replaced before the effects of the hellship could be too severe. Occasionally those who would fall to the hellship incredibly quickly joined the crew, but Drake now knew what to watch out for and ensured they left again soon after, well before they could suffer any long-term harm.

At least he had done that for many years. When Jensen came on board it quickly become clear he’d fall to the influence of the Azimuth more quickly than most. Despite him quickly becoming a valuable member of the crew, Drake had made the decision to find a station where the youngster could be safely left along with several other crew members who were nearing their safe tolerance of exposure to the Azimuth. All of them would receive a handsome bonus as a thank you for their service.

Before that could happen the Commander came on board. He’d sold Drake a story about carrying vital medicines but that had been a lie. The Commander revealed he was a member of the Phoenix Conglomerate, a small but powerful faction which spent huge efforts to recover unusual and powerful technology. Instead of medicines the Commander had smuggled a bomb on board the Dagger, one he’d then used to blackmail Drake into a long-running mission.

One condition the Commander insisted on was that none of the crew could be allowed to leave until the mission was over. Drake couldn’t explain why some of the crew needed to leave, couldn’t tell the Commander or anyone else that the Dagger was really a hellship, so he was left trying to get the mission completed as quickly as possible.

It wasn’t possible. The Commander kept pushing for them to do more and with the bomb threatening the entire crew Drake had no choice other than to agree. Even then, some of the crew in danger of falling should have been able to leave the ship by the time the mission was over.

But these were far from normal circumstances. The mission had taken them to areas of space where strange energies bathed the ship, then into conflict with a hellship and so into the path of unnatural influences. The cumulative effects had been far more than was needed to tip those crew who were vulnerable over the edge, for the Azimuth to finish getting its hooks into them.

Drake had struggled with guilt ever since Jacobs fell to the Azimuth. Having more crew suffering the same fate had been a terrible blow. And then something far worse happened…

Drake and his crew had the chance to rescue a couple of hundred children the Dark Acolytes had kidnapped from ships and stations, often killing the children’s families in the process. Drake learnt from a captured Dark Acolyte the children were to be sacrificed and where the ceremony would take place.

When the Dagger arrived Drake found the children were held on board a huge ship which itself was at the centre of a hundreds-strong fleet. Added to that, the central ship had thousands of Acolytes on board, all vying to get as close as possible to the site of the sacrifice.

Getting anywhere near the children had seemed impossible. Even getting close enough to destroy the ship and kill the children, at least saving them from being lined up and sacrificed one after another, hadn’t seemed achievable.

That’s when the Azimuth had intervened, offering Drake a way to succeed. In that place, at that time, it could make use of the strange energies in the area to render the Acolytes on all the ships unconscious.

Drake had immediately been suspicious. He’d grilled the Azimuth, trying to uncover any downside but he’d found nothing. He discovered most of his crew would be knocked out too, only those whose souls were tied to the hellship would be immune, but none of his crew or the Acolytes would suffer or be harmed in the long term.

There’d been no choice. Drake accepted the offer and the Azimuth delivered on its side. Drake and his small group of still conscious crew conscious managed to reach the Acolyte ship and break in without facing any further threats.

They recovered the children, who were also unconscious, and started back to the Dagger. The Acolytes began stirring as Drake and his crew raced for the airlock, coming fully awake but able to muster little resistance as almost all of them had been in the sacrificial area.

Drake, his crew, and the children all made it back on board the Dagger. Drake raced to the bridge, ordering the Dagger to disengage and start fighting its way out even before he reached it.

Only then did the sting in the tail of the Azimuth’s help become clear. Drake had gone to great trouble to be sure his crew wouldn’t be harmed and they hadn’t been. Not by the Azimuth’s definition of harm at least. Drake saw things very differently. His crew, his entire crew, had been brought under the Azimuth’s control. Every single crew member was now tied to the Azimuth, and so to Drake.

The thing Drake had always feared even more than leading his crew to their deaths had come to pass and the Azimuth revelled in having out-thought Drake to achieve it. It might have to obey his orders but it still sought every opportunity to cause harm and mayhem.

At that moment it had seemed impossible things could get worse, but they soon did. It wasn’t just Drake’s crew who were now tied to the hellship and under his control. It was the Dark Acolytes on their hundreds of ships too!

The only slight spark in the darkness was that the children were too young to have been bound to the hellship. They’d been so heavily knocked out that they’d been closer to comatose than unconscious. At least they would be able to leave the Dagger… as long as Drake didn’t take too long making it happen.

The Azimuth viewed the Dark Acolytes and their ships as a gift to Drake, an armada he could use to impose his will on all he met. A force to ensure he’d never have anything to fear from any but the largest hostile fleets and with which he could destroy any other hellships he encountered.

Drake had refused. It was too much. Far too much. Instead of accepting the Acolytes’ allegiance he’d used his power to force them to destroy their own ships, to blow their vessels and themselves into oblivion.

He did it without regret. These were people who worshipped hellships and had been more than happy to sacrifice hundreds of innocent children to their gods. The universe was a far better place without them.

That had solved the problem of the Acolytes, but Drake now had an entire crew who were tied to the Azimuth. They were a smart bunch and Drake was sure that over time they’d grow to realise things were not right. From there it wouldn’t take long before one of them guessed exactly what was happening.

Unless Drake ordered them not to notice. He could reach out through the Azimuth and influence their minds. He could prevent them even noticing any signs which might lead them to suspect the truth. It was in his power. It would be so easy…

He could never do it! That would be the ultimate betrayal. Much as he dreaded breaking the news to his crew, overpowering their wills in any way would be far worse. As with Jacobs, he would do everything in his power to allow the crew to retain their sense of self, their personalities, their independence. They would never be truly free but he owed them their dignity and as much of their free will as was possible.

Yet he was already fighting temptation to break that self-imposed code. All of his crew knew something strange happened when the children were rescued. Most of the crew had found themselves waking up as Drake and a few others were returning to the Dagger carrying the rescued children.

Those who’d gone with Drake had got to see not only the Acolytes but their own crewmates and the children in the same state. Then they’d all watched as the entire Acolyte fleet self-destructed, an apparent act of mass suicide.

Drake used the strange blue crystal he had grabbed while rescuing the children to explain why the Acolytes had allowed the Dagger to escape and not followed until it was well clear. But he had been completely clear he had not used the crystal to cause the Acolytes to destroy themselves.

The implication his crew took from that was that he hadn’t ordered the Acolytes to self-destruct. That was wrong… all he’d said was that he hadn’t used the crystal to do so, and that was perfectly true.

That explanation brought its own complexity. Drake hadn’t had the crystal until they reached the centre of the Acolytes ship, so he couldn’t use it to explain why everyone fell unconscious. He was still trying to think of a plausible excuse for why that had happened while knowing curiosity amongst his crew was growing.

Because of that he was sailing dangerously close to breaking the commitment he’d made, using his link with the crew to encourage them to focus on what had been achieved and not how. He kept catching himself rationalising it as a short-term nudge rather than long term control. He was all too aware those were semantics, excuses which could easily be stretched to cover another urgent need. Then another. Down that road lay exactly what he had sworn not to do under any circumstance.

So he needed a convincing lie. Something the crew would believe without him having to nudge them. So far he hadn’t come up with anything at all.

Knowing that as time passed, as the crew got more curious, he would be more and more tempted to suggest they not focus on their questions only made it harder to come up with any ideas. He was almost hoping for an attack of some sort, for combat to distract everyone from the situation. But the scanners were staying stubbornly clear of any ship, hostile or neutral.

After going around in circles too many times Drake decided he needed an alternative viewpoint. He turned to Sonia, his first officer.

Sonia, you have the bridge. I’m heading to my cabin.

If you have a few minutes I’d like a word, Sonia said.

Sorry, not right now. I’m trying to work out our next moves. Come see me in an hour. In the meantime get Jacobs to whip up some food and bring it to me. Something quick.

Captain, we’ll be reaching the next jump point in about thirty minutes. Don’t you want to be on the bridge for that?

No, not unless anything shows up as we’re approaching it. I’m beginning to think we may be in the clear. For now at least.

All right, Captain. And I’ll contact Jacobs.

Thank you.

Drake got up and walked off the bridge. He could feel Sonia’s eyes on him the whole time. Even after he’d left he could still feel her confusion, until he focused on shutting it out.

He had a good working relationship with his first officer and refusing to talk to her was out of character, but he needed that hour. He needed a chance to think through what should be done, but more than that he needed a chance to talk to the one person on the Dagger he could be totally honest with.

Besides, he was hungry. The food would certainly be welcome even if it was just a cover.

2

Drake looked up at the signal indicating someone was outside his door. He’d only been in his cabin a few minutes. Could it be Jacobs with some food already?

He set the door to open and found it was Jacobs, and that the cook had a covered tray with him.

Thank you, said Drake. Please bring it in.

Of course, Captain, replied Jacobs.

Neither of them spoke until Jacobs was in the room and the door had closed again. There wasn’t anyone in the corridor as far as Drake could see but he wasn’t going to take chances on even the start of their discussion being overheard.

That was fast, he said.

Well, I picked up a trace through our link that this was about more than just food so I’m afraid you only got some sandwiches.

I didn’t end up giving you an order through the link did I?

"No! Don’t worry, Captain. I know you are extremely careful about that. Like I’ve told you, sometimes a little something leaks through the link without you giving direct orders. It’s not something I’m forced to respond to, it just gives me an idea of what you may need. Only when you’re thinking about me for some reason though, so generally when it involves food."

I hadn’t realised. I’m going to have to be more careful. Actually, that’s why I wanted to speak to you. Something terrible has happened.

I know. The rest of the crew are now joined to the ship. I felt when it happened. Don’t worry, none of them will have sensed anything. They aren’t that tightly joined yet. I’ve been linked to you and the ship for a long time, I’ve learnt to sense when something major happens.

Drake stared at Jacobs, surprised both by how much he already knew and how calmly he was taking it all. Drake rubbed the back of his neck, trying to ease the muscles.

Please take a seat. I think this is going to be a long chat. I need to decide whether to tell everyone what has happened now or wait until another time.

I’m not sure there’s ever a good time for people to hear they’ve been linked with a hellship for the rest of their lives but it might be worth waiting a little longer while the connections settle down. I’m not really sure I can help you to make a decision on that one though.

I know. It’s my responsibility but you’re the only person I can bounce ideas off. I think I’m going to leave it a while yet, certainly until all the children are off the ship. And then… I don’t know. I’ll have to tell them sometime. I guess I’ll just play it by ear.

If you aren’t going to tell them yet, said Jacobs. Then you need a good explanation for what happened when we rescued the Acolytes and you need to steer them away from any thoughts it involved unusual powers. Telling them the crystal stopped us being attacked was a great move but that’s another magical item and you really don’t want them thinking along those lines. The only alternative I can see would be something technological.

That’s true but the technology to do that to thousands of people across hundreds of ships is way beyond anything I’ve ever heard of. It’s the sort of thing only the Phoenix Conglomerate would be likely to have…

He paused as his brain caught up with his words, then he grinned.

Wait! he said. Of course! That’s it! I can tell them it was something left behind by the Commander. Something that destroyed itself when it was used.

That would do the trick, Captain. You won’t even need to nudge people through the link to help them believe it. We all saw the strange tech the Commander was using.

It’s perfect. It will explain what happened without having to go into too many details and should completely put people off any thoughts that could lead into what really happened.

It’s only a temporary reprieve, Captain. At some point you’re going to have to tell everyone the truth or they’re going to start realising it themselves.

"I know! Damn it, I know. But I need