Battlespace (The Stars Aflame Book 1)

by Richard Tongue

“Helm, alter course accordingly, and implement when ready.” He tapped a control on the armrest of his chair, and said, “Bridge to Engineering.”

  “Santoro here. What’s going on up there?”

  “We had a little incident. It’s all resolved now, but I’m going to need more acceleration than I was expecting. Transfer all the power you can to the engines. I’ll need everything you’ve got.”

  With a sigh, she replied, “One of these days, I’ll say no, just to mess with you.” She chuckled, then added, “We’re at full power now, sir, and I think I can manage one-oh-five on the reactor for a while.”

  “Power coming up, Captain,” Chen reported. “Implementing course change.”

  “Thanks, Gabi,” Scott said. “Ride herd on it all the way. At least I’m not going to be asking the impossible for that much longer.”

  “I’ll hold you to that. Engineering out.”

  Leonidas turned, the engines rumbling as it dived towards the target. Scott watched the sensor display, the alien ship still heading towards the shuttle, unknowingly targeting the one ship that might be able to beat them. The trajectory plot arced towards the distant target, Chen not attempting any sort of finesse on this maneuver, instead going for a straight-in approach, a collision course.

  Scott glanced at the bloodstain on the floor, just behind his chair, and shook his head. He would never have believed that Wilson would have cracked like that, but given the overwhelming pressure they were all facing, it was more of a surprise that he was the only one to break. He looked closely at Chen, no pressure betrayed on the face of the helmsman, only a slight quiver in his hands. Understandable, given the circumstances, and no worse than anyone else on the bridge.

  He looked back at the elevator, shaking his head, unable to quite get accustomed to the thought that it was Ivanov who’d saved his life. He’d not trusted him, not liked him, had come close to ordering him off his ship back when he’d first reported on board. Now he was lying in Sickbay on the verge of death, and he’d taken the laser pulse meant for him.

  “No change to target aspect, sir,” Sullivan reported. “Holding course to intercept the shuttle.”

  “Take the damned bait,” Rochford muttered. “Come on, take the damned bait.”

  “Hail the enemy ship,” he said. Rochford glanced across at the empty communications station, then slaved the controls to his console, saying, “You’re on, sir, but I don’t think…”

  “This is Captain Michael Scott, of the Commonwealth Navy. If you want to destroy mankind, you’re going to have to get through us first. I’m sitting on nine proto-matter quantum warheads ready to wipe you from the map, and I’m going to give you one more chance to turn tail and run for home before I fire them. You hear me over there? Run or die.”

  A low, rumbling voice, replied, “The infestation will be purged. It will happen today, or it will happen tomorrow, but it will happen. Accept your fate and it will be easier.”

  “I could say the same about you,” Scott replied. “We’re not going to roll over and die for your convenience. We’ll fight to the last ship, the last man, and he’ll spit in your eye with his last damned breath!”

  “Some species accept their fate. They die with dignity. You will not be accorded that privilege. This communication is over.”

  “I think you’ve made them mad,” Chen said.

  “Change to target aspect, sir!” Sullivan yelled. “They’re altering course, heading right for us. They’re ignoring the shuttle now, Captain.”

  Nodding, Scott said, “That’s more like it. I guess they might be a little more human than they’d like everyone else to think.” Turning to Chen, he said, “Take us in closer, Ensign.”

  “Aye, sir. I’ll veer off at the last minute and run for the minefield.” He looked down at the trajectory plot, and added, “This one is going to be close, sir. We’ll be passing through in about six minutes. Do you think they can be ready in time?”

  “I damned well hope so, Ensign, because I doubt the aliens will give us a second chance.”

  Chapter 21

  “We’re in position, Lieutenant,” Cunningham said, turning from the cockpit. “Enemy ship is veering off. They’re heading after Leonidas for the moment. You think that might change when they realize what we’re doing?”

  “I’d say that’s a distinct possibility,” she replied, turning to her controls. “Do we have any sort of time factor in all of this?”

  “Six minutes minus, ma’am.”

  “Hold us steady for the moment, but get that course plotted for the shadow wormhole. I don’t know where it’s going to take us, but we’ll just have to hope it’s somewhere nice.”

  “Bora Bora would be good,” Cunningham replied with a smile.

  Novak’s hands were already racing across her controls, trying to handshake with the reactors floating in space beyond her, the ruined remnants of the once-proud Commonwealth fleet. It felt wrong to fly around the wrecks, as though they were desecrating a grave. Technically, that’s precisely what they were doing, though she somehow thought that the dead wouldn’t protest their actions if they knew. They’d come out here knowing that there was a good chance they wouldn’t be coming back, willing to give their lives for their people. All she was doing was making certain that their sacrifice had been worthwhile, that their lives weren’t wasted in a futile cause.

  The shuttle eased into position, staying clear of the debris field, the cloud of shrapnel surrounding the ruined ships that could easily smash their vessel to pieces if they ventured too close, but holding place within communication range of the reactors. Novak played carefully with the controls, needing to make the signal powerful enough to make contact, but not so strong that the enemy would pick them up, work out what they were doing.

  She looked at the enemy ship again while the computer struggled to make a connection, watching it slowly curve towards them, knowing that it was only using the barest fraction of their potential acceleration at present. They had a lot more power to play with if they choose to use it, though at present, they were still recharging, recovering from the battle they had won so quickly, so easily.

  A green light winked on, and she nodded in satisfaction, first contact established. The wreck of Protector was responding to her commands, the reactor control systems registering her input. If it worked for one ship, it would work for the others, and she labored to contact each surviving reactor in the fleet, one after another. All of them had been built to the same standard design, largely unchanged for decades, and that uniformity was making her task easier now.

  One by one, green lights winked onto her display, dead ships brought back to a semblance of temporary life in response to her commands, or orders. She began to believe that their plan, as crazy as it felt, might actually be possible. At last, after three minutes, she had contact with all of them. Now she had to move to the next phase.

  The now-dead engineers who had designed the reactors had gone to a lot of effort to stop them from exploding. The first decades of antimatter reactor design had been a litany of accidents, the researchers banished to the outer limits of the solar system in a bid to prevent exactly the destruction that they were now seeking to bring about. That was still inherent in the design, impossible to remove completely, but a host of safeguards had been implemented before anyone had dared to put a crew on an antimatter-powered ship.

  She had to turn them all off, and understandably, the safety systems were extremely reluctant to permit her to do that. One by one, she implemented command overrides, a sea of warning lights flashing onto her panel. Now the job became harder still, because she had to prevent the reactors from exploding until she wanted them to. A single safeguard was needed, one that would result in instant destruction if it was activated. The flow regulator was the simplest. If the matter and antimatter were not permitted to mix until the final second, there could be no destruction.

  “Communications relay deployed,” Cunningham reported. “Enemy ship is heading our way
, ma’am. We need to think about getting out of here.” He shook his head, and said, “Chen’s really leading them a merry dance, but I don’t think he’s going to be able to keep it up for much longer. If they go any slower, they’ll come into firing range, and all of this will end pretty quickly.”

  “Almost there,” she replied, throwing the controls across to the relay, setting the systems up to accept its commands. With a final, flashing light, the systems accepted her inputs, and the new programming was locked into the drifting reactors, ready to erupt into unimaginable fury when the button was pushed. She ran over the controls for one last time, then logged out with the throw of a switch.

  “That’s it, Ensign. We’ve done our job. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “We’ve got a new problem,” he replied. “The alien ship is altering course again. They might be onto us.” Turning to her, he added, “I suppose they could have detected the power build-up. It’d be hard to miss if they were paying attention.”

  “Is there anything we can do?”

  “Leonidas is on it, changing trajectory,” Cunningham said. “Should we hold position?”

  Nodding, she replied, “Just in case.”

  “Come on, Chen, make that bastard dance,” the pilot said, watching the plot as Leonidas altered course, yielding acceleration to slip back towards the ship. They turned to port as though struggling to hold their trajectory, curving back towards the remnants of the fleet, the wreckage still tumbling through space. Chen had a difficult job, guiding the enemy ship without them realizing they were being drawn in, but he played his console like a master, drifting close enough to tempt their foe without getting into range.

  “I think…,” Novak said. “That’s done it.”

  “Confirmed. Well within blast range,” Cunningham replied. “Should I…”

  Before the pilot could reply, Novak looked up at her sensor display, and said, “Energy spike!” A crimson beam passed between the alien ship and Leonidas, a second of carelessness that left them vulnerable to attack. At the final instant, Chen must have sensed his error, and altered course just enough to prevent the beam making contact with the ship.

  Mostly.

  “I’m picking up some damage,” Novak said. “But not bad. They’re going to struggle to get clear, though.” Turning to Cunningham, she replied, “Let’s get the hell out of here, Ensign. Emergency acceleration, full thrust for the shadow wormhole.”

  “Aye, ma’am!” he replied, his hand reaching down to throw the shuttle’s throttles full-open, the ship racing to the theoretical safety of the wormhole, barely fifteen thousand miles away. Novak looked back at the wrecked ships behind them, watching the tumbled ruins slowly drifting around, containing the corpses of thousands of their comrades. It was possible that Wilson had been right, that some of those crews might have survived, but there was no way to tell, not without delaying detonation.

  She tried not to think about it, but her imagination was too good. She could see desperate technicians trying to work out why their reactors had come back on-line, why the safety systems were failing, one after another. Why someone seemed determined to destroy their one chance of survival.

  Throwing a control, she focused their sensors on the enemy ship, watching as it raced towards them, their course taking them through the ruins of the fleet. If they suspected that they were being tricked, there was no evidence of it, and she began to think that their plan would really work. Given the radius of the planned explosion, the only danger was that they might be able to outrun it, as it had outrun the comet they’d destroyed before.

  Only a few hours ago. It seemed like centuries, as though they’d been fighting this remorseless, implacable enemy for an eternity. It was hard to believe that so little time had passed, given the price they had already paid. So many ships lost, three worlds destroyed, destroyed so completely that it would be thousands of years before it would be safe for humanity to walk on their surfaces once more.

  “Lieutenant, we’ve got a new problem,” Cunningham warned. “They’re increasing speed.”

  “Christ,” she replied, working the controls once more. “They’re heading right for the satellite.”

  “I guess our secret’s out,” he said.

  “Not all of it, or they’d be running for the wormhole as fast as they can,” she replied. “Can you give me a projected time until they reach firing range?”

  “A little over four minutes, ma’am.” He turned a key, and the engines roared louder. “I’ve disabled the safeties. It’ll be a short life and a merry one for the propulsion systems, but we should just be able to make it to the wormhole in time.” Looking back at Novak, he said, “Leonidas…”

  “They’ll never do it. Not even at maximum power.”

  “We could turn back,” Cunningham suggested. “Trigger it ourselves. It might finish the two of us, but…”

  “I don’t think we could do it,” she said. “You’d never shed this much velocity in the time, and even if we did, I doubt we’d live any longer than that satellite will.” Her hands inched towards the controls, and she opened a channel, daring to risk direct contact with their base ship. “Shuttle One to Leonidas…”

  “Scott here,” a tired voice replied. “We read the same as you do, Lieutenant. Trigger detonation at the last possible second, but under no circumstances are you to risk being unable to activate the charges. Completing the mission comes first. Our survival is secondary. And besides, Leonidas is a tough little ship. We might just get through this yet.”

  “Sir…”

  “That’s an order, Lieutenant!” Scott pressed. “We’re wasting time. I’ll see you on the far side.”

  “Aye, Captain. Shuttle One out.” Turning to Cunningham, she said, “You heard the man. Burn for the wormhole. Maximum power.”

  “But…”

  “Do it!” she yelled, bringing up the arming sequence. No matter what Captain Scott had said, she was going to wait as long as she dared, her hand poised over the controls. The wormhole loomed ahead, Cunningham making pinpoint course alterations in a bid to bring them through on target. Behind them, the alien ship loomed, power flowing to its lasers, ready to destroy the satellite. She had to make a guess about the potential range, the speed of the enemy, a thousand variables that could make the difference between life or death.

  “Wormhole in two minutes,” Cunningham reported. That was the deadline. Leonidas could trigger the detonation, but they were running in the other direction, bound by their previous course to the other wormhole exit, the path directly back to Sol. They’d be just a little farther away, and those few milliseconds might just make the difference. The shuttle had to trigger it.

  She had to trigger it. And in all likelihood, destroy everything in this system. The scale of the explosion hadn’t taken into account the alien craft. It’s reactor was larger than anything ever conceived. She held her hand over the button. She had to wait until the last second. So far, the enemy had countered every move they’d made. The less time they had to react, the better. Seconds could count, each one bringing the alien ship a few miles closer to the blast radius.

  “One minute,” Cunningham said.

  Then there was the other uncertainty. They’d be heading into the unknown. A journey that could take them to any part of the galaxy, the universe. There was no potential limit to the distance that might be traversed between two wormholes. A part of her almost hoped that it was something new, some strange, unknown world. Something to satisfy the wanderer within her soul.

  They were out of time. The alien ship was closing, seconds away from destroying the satellite. She took a deep breath, and hit the button.

  Nothing happened.

  Her eyes widened, and her fingers danced across the controls, trying to correct the fault, knowing that there was no time at all left if they were going to make the attack work. Just as the shuttle slid into the wormhole, as the alien ship powered up its cannon to launch its strike, she tapped the button again,
and this time a green light flashed. The signal had been sent, and received.

  The shuttle slid into otherspace, an instant before the explosion, and Novak sat back in her seat, slumping at her station.

  “We’re flying through this one. I guess the Folk really knew how to build wormholes,” Cunningham said. “We’re going to be out the other end in a few minutes, ma’am, not hours.” Turning to her, he asked, “Did it work, Lieutenant?”

  “I don’t know, Ensign,” she replied. “The signal made it through, but…I just don’t know.”

  Chapter 22

  “Signal dispatched,” Rochford yelled.

  “Any effect?” Scott asked.

  “Not yet.” Slamming his fist against the console, Rochford added, “Satellite destroyed. They got it with a single shot.” Turning to Scott, he said, “We could swing around, try and…”

  “It’d be too late,” Scott said. “Well, people, I guess…”

  “Wait one!” Sullivan yelled. “Instability from the reactors, cascade effect in progress. I think this is it!” Turning to Chen, she said, “Faisal, for God’s sake, more power!”

  “I’m running at one-oh-eight now!” the helmsman yelled.

  “Viewscreen off!” Scott ordered, a second too late, as a blinding flash filled the screen, all fourteen antimatter reactors exploding at the same moment. His eyes streamed with tears as the searing effect burned into his retina, forcing a blinding afterimage that he struggled to dismiss. Through it all, Leonidas’ engines kept running, faster and faster, building acceleration as rapidly as it could.

  The shockwave caught the alien ship within seconds, and for a heart-breaking instant, Scott thought that it had somehow managed to weather even this tremendous storm, but it exploded after the briefest exposure, unable to cope with the forces subjected to it, stresses barely understood. The shock wave hit the planet a few seconds later, completing the work the enemy warship had begun, reducing the crust to molten rubble as the violence of the explosion hammered home, dispersing what was left of the planetary atmosphere.