Battlegroup Vega

by Anders Raynor

  “Sorry to disturb you, captain, but we need to talk.”

  Hunt raised his dark eyes and stared in silence. Adrian took that as an invitation to enter.

  “Please tell me we didn’t do this,” Adrian said. “Tell me the Alliance has nothing to do with the chancellor’s assassination.”

  “Why are you asking me this? How would I know?”

  “Please, captain, don’t insult my intelligence. You want everyone to believe you’re a maverick, but it’s clear to me you’re Winsley’s black knight. You conduct covert ops the ASF wouldn’t officially sanction. Two years ago, I’m sure it was Winsley who sent you after me. A year later, you snatched me from Raak’naar’s claws at the Battle of Olympica. A few days ago, you came to my rescue again, when DeCourt’s people arrested me. I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  The captain tilted his head, as if he were listening to a distant sound. “The ASF had nothing to do with the chancellor’s assassination, and I doubt the AIS was involved either.”

  “It was Raak’naar. He couldn’t allow the chancellor to sign that peace treaty.”

  “If you want my opinion, this is bigger than Raak’naar and his thirst for power. I believe there was a larger conspiracy to sabotage the peace talks. The religious castes are prime suspects in my book. Raak’naar is no scripture thumper; his speech about blasphemy and holy wars serves a specific purpose. I just received reports that the Biozi have launched an all-out assault throughout the eastern front. The greatest armada in the recorded galactic history is headed toward Vega as we speak.”

  Feeling dizzy, Adrian dropped into a chair and stared at the floor. “So this is happening. The moment we’ve dreaded for years, while hoping we could avoid it. A total war with the Taar’kuun.”

  They both knew the fall of Vega-IV, the capital world of the Alliance, could be a fatal blow to mankind.

  “Winsley assembled a fleet to defend the capital. The Defiance is being repaired, so his flagship for this battle is ASC Liberty, a converted Ziggurat-class Biozi dreadnaught. It’s the biggest warship in the ASF arsenal. He ordered the Remembrance to join him; he needs all the ships he can get.”

  Adrian raised his eyes at the captain. “By the way, there’s another matter I wanted to discuss. Lieutenant-Commander Blaze—”

  “Is temporarily relieved of duty,” Hunt cut him short. “Lance is acting XO. I want Dr. Galen to examine Blaze. She’s not on board unfortunately. She had to return to Vega due to an urgent personal matter. I don’t know if she made it.”

  “I just wanted to say—”

  “Save it, doctor. You don’t have to convince me. I confined Blaze to quarters, not to punish him, but for his own good. He’s clearly suffering from PTSD, and he’s a danger to himself and other members of my crew in his present condition. I understand and share his pain. Ambassador Ansgaard was an old friend of mine.”

  That would explain how the ambassador met Jason.

  “Sorry, doctor, I have work to do,” the captain added, his eyes already returning to his screen.

  Understanding he’d been dismissed, Adrian left the captain’s quarters.

  * * *

  Adrian didn’t get much sleep. War invaded even his dreams, and images of blazing ships and corpses frozen in space haunted him all night long. Ophelia was calling out to him, but he couldn’t reach her. She was falling, and he was powerless to save her.

  He woke up at 04:00 and decided it was pointless to stay in bed any longer. He took a shower and put on a fresh coverall. Then he ordered breakfast using the dispenser in his quarters. He didn’t want to go to the mess hall, as he assumed the crew would still be asleep, and sitting alone in a vast empty room wouldn’t do any good to his morale.

  “You’re feeling lonely,” Ria said. “Can I be of any help?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “You want to talk to Jason, but you’re afraid he resents you because he had to save you instead of his father.”

  A membrane opened above the dispenser and a biobot flew through, carrying a tray loaded with food. Its white body the size of a pigeon hovered in the air as if by magic. Adrian knew that hundreds of flagellar rotors kept it airborne, spinning so fast they were invisible to the human eye. The biobot set a tray loaded with food before Adrian and dashed back into the conduit.

  After the sumptuous meals at the palace, the food prepared by the ship seemed barely palatable, but Adrian had no appetite anyway. He picked at something that looked like scrambled eggs with little enthusiasm, and took a spoonful of synthetic porridge.

  “You also want to talk to Talia,” Ria continued. “Why don’t you call her?”

  “The ship is in no comms mode, silly,” he replied within his mind. “We can’t risk being detected. There are Biozi patrols everywhere.”

  “You could ask the captain to set up a secure subspace channel.”

  “I’m not going to bother the captain with such trivial matters. What’s with you today, Ria? Why are you bothering me with this?”

  “Because I’m the voice of your subconscious. I’m part of you, whether you like it or not, Adrian.” She pronounced his name emphasizing the letters “ria.”

  He sipped his black coffee without responding. The drink was unpleasantly bitter, but his brain needed a good caffeine kick.

  “You can’t go on like this,” Ria insisted. “You desire companionship, yet you’re afraid to form bonds with people.”

  Adrian almost spilled his coffee when a stunningly beautiful blonde appeared in the cabin. It’d been a while since Ria played that trick on him.

  “You want to embrace your humanity?” the heavenly creature asked in a sensual voice. “So why are you so reluctant to explore the most intimate aspects of human nature?”

  Her strawberry-blond hair framed a face with fair skin, dark-green eyes with long lashes, and carmine lips. She wore nothing but a gossamer dress that left little to imagination. She slid on the bunk next to him. Her sweet perfume enveloped him like an invisible cloud.

  “You used to dream of me, remember?” she whispered into his ear. “When desire was a new feeling for you. Frightening and enticing at the same time.”

  The Taar’kuun had lost the ability to reproduce sexually eons ago, and they knew nothing about love or desire. They didn’t even have genders anymore. They produced embryos artificially and grew them in maturation chambers.

  Adrian shut his eyes. “We’re in the middle of a crisis, and you’re playing your silly games with me? Go away, temptress. You’re not real.”

  “But you don’t have the courage to court a real woman, do you, nerd?” Even the word “nerd” sounded endearing, pronounced in her soft voice.

  He sighed, his eyes still closed. “I regret the day I grafted that clump of neurons onto my brain. I thought you would be just a bionic AI.”

  “But then you turned human, and I became a Taar’kuun-human hybrid, the link between your former and your new life.”

  “So why do you appear to me as human female?”

  “Because I’m the nightmare of your Taar’kuun half, and the dream of your human half. You cannot control me more than you can control your subconscious.”

  He felt the warmth of her fingers as they slid under his coverall and moved downward.

  The entrance door of his quarters parted without warning. Adrian opened his eyes and jumped to his feet, flushed and panting.

  “Riley!” he shouted, his trembling fingers closing the zipper of his coverall to hide his naked chest. “I didn’t expect you. I was just doing…hmm…yoga breathing exercises. You never ring at the door, do you?”

  “My apologies, doctor,” she replied. “I didn’t mean to invade your privacy. It’s an old habit from my Taar’kuun life. Privacy was a concept alien to our caste.”

  “Apologies accepted, Riley. I wasn’t doing anything important anyway. Are we still far from Vega?”

  “No, it’s just two jumps away. ETA is 07:00. I wanted to talk to you before we arrive. I
know I sounded harsh when I told Blaze I didn’t want to work with him anymore.”

  “You care about him, don’t you?”

  Riley looked away. It was the first time Adrian saw her embarrassed. “I found it easier to be Taar’kuun,” she confessed. “We knew exactly for what purpose we were created, what was our role in society, and what was expected from us. Being human is so…unsettling.”

  “Yet you wouldn’t hesitate to give your life for the Alliance. Isn’t it paradoxical?”

  “Yes, it is. Maybe I was wrong about Blaze. Now that I’m thinking about it, I know why the captain promoted him to XO instead of me. I fight because it’s my duty; Blaze fights because he understands humanity. He understands what’s really at stake. Please tell the captain to reinstate him.”

  “I guess you already asked the captain, and he said no, so now you’re asking me. It’s a military decision; do you think he’s going to listen to a nerd?”

  Riley nodded. “He respects your opinion. I’m sure he’ll take it into consideration.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Adrian replied noncommittally. He didn’t want to tell Riley he’d already asked the captain about Jason. They both knew that stubbornness was one of Captain Hunt’s defining characteristics.

  07

  A song that would never die

  When the Remembrance reached Vega-IV, the battle was raging. Adrian hadn’t seen that many warships assembled in one stellar system since the Battle of Olympica. However, this time, it was obvious the Biozi had learned from their mistakes. Instead of forming massive fleets, their bioships worked in small battlegroups, imitating ASF tactics.

  Another crucial difference: the Biozi now had carriers and starfighters. During the first four years of the war, ASF fighter-bombers had inflicted massive losses on the Biozi fleets. A year ago, a human carrier battlegroup could engage eight Biozi battlegroups of similar size and still achieve victory, or at least a draw. Such a feat was no longer possible as the Biozi battlegroups were now protected by squadrons of Arachnid-class interceptors.

  The hostiles surrounded the planet and overwhelmed its orbital defenses. Even the most heavily defended world in the Alliance stood no chance against such an onslaught.

  The Remembrance engaged cloaking and set course for Winsley’s battlegroup. Hunt wanted to take full advantage of the element of surprise.

  Adrian was on the bridge, following the battle through the eyes of recon drones. Hostile ships were dark dots against the green and blue sphere of the planet. Carcasses of destroyed bioships drifted in space, veiled in purple clouds of bioplasma. Although the ASF was fighting a losing battle, it made the invaders pay dearly for their victory.

  “Hunt, take down their Kraken,” Winsley ordered.

  The Taar’kuun never named ship’s models and classes, giving them only alpha-numerical designations. To facilitate communication, the ASF gave names to Biozi craft classes, inspired by mythological creatures. The Kraken-class carrier leading the hostile battlegroup resembled a monstrous squid.

  “You heard the admiral,” the captain said to his officers. “Lance, get a firing solution on the target and arm the deltas. Kumara, keep an eye on the escorting cruisers and get ready to intercept incoming ordnance. As soon as we break cloaking, the fiesta will begin.”

  “Target acquired.” Riley’s tone was calm and professional. “Deltas on standby.”

  “Good,” the captain said. “Time to roast some bugs. Fire!”

  Riley launched one volley of four missiles, then a second one. Racing toward their target, they drew eight parallel lines. The enemy carrier deployed a swarm of defense biobots that intercepted half of the deltas, but the remaining ones smashed into its conical body.

  Four mini-suns flashed as the antimatter charges exploded. Plasma engulfed the 1.6-klick-long carrier. Its carapace turned from black to crimson as its armor struggled to dissipate energy from the blasts. A series of secondary explosions ripped through the hull, expelling fragments of the bioship’s internal systems and corpses of incinerated Biozi.

  “You didn’t see that coming,” the captain muttered with satisfaction in his voice.

  However, now uncloaked, the Remembrance had lost the element of surprise. Two Typhon-class cruisers escorting the carrier activated their lateral thrusters to face the destroyer.

  “Evade,” the captain ordered the navigation officer who replaced Jason. “Pattern gamma-six.”

  The hostile cruisers shot eight deltas each. The Remembrance jerked to the side and engaged in a complex evasive maneuver. It spewed defense bots and its rapid-fire blasters lashed at the enemy missiles.

  The navigation officer was a good pilot, but not as good as Jason Blaze.

  The ship trembled, and lights on the bridge flickered as a delta scored a hit.

  “Starboard hull breach,” one of the officers reported. “Section alpha one destroyed, alpha two to seven compromised. We’re losing power.”

  “We need to stop the bleed,” the captain said. “Doctor, I need you to help my repair team.”

  Adrian was about to reply he was no mechanic, but he kept it to himself. He did have some relevant knowledge, and he wanted to make himself useful. At the very least, he hoped his presence would boost the morale of the repair crew.

  When the evasive maneuvers finished, Adrian deactivated the seat belts and stood up. “I’m on my way,” he said to the captain.

  He trotted to the nearest autopod and instructed the onboard AI to take him to section alpha where the repair team was assembling. Meanwhile, the captain ordered the navigator to take Remembrance out of range of enemy missiles.

  The autopod didn’t reach its destination. It dropped Adrian at the entrance to section alpha, deck two.

  The entire section was an inferno. Biosynthetic materials weren’t flammable under most circumstances, but the temperature was so high that everything was blazing. Fire suppression systems were down, and the crew fought hand to hand with the flames. They threw cryogenic grenades to lower the temperature, blew clouds of cold gas from high-pressure extinguishers, and cut through debris with plasma torches.

  The filters in Adrian’s helmet activated automatically to protect him from toxic fumes coming from the blaze. He found the officer coordinating repairs and asked how he could help.

  “Heat dispersion—that’s the most immediate problem,” the officer shouted to cover the roar of the flames. “Stasis fields in this section are dead.”

  Stasis fields were integrated into the ship’s armor and offered some protection against anti-capital weapons. They also dissipated the heat in case of internal explosions.

  “We can reroute additional power to the stasis fields in the adjacent sections,” Adrian suggested. “We can draw it from blaster turrets.”

  “If the captain authorizes that, we’ll do it.”

  When Adrian submitted his idea to the captain, the latter said, “Do it. Winsley told us to disengage, but he wants us to keep the ionics ready. Take power from the ACBs and missile launchers, but leave the ionic cannons on standby, understood?”

  Adrian wondered what Winsley had in mind. He asked Ria to keep him connected to the comm channel between the admiral and the bridge of the Remembrance.

  Ten minutes later, he heard Winsley’s voice addressing Hunt. “We have to retreat, otherwise we’ll lose the entire fleet. The Biozi control all the gates, and they deployed jump inhibitors around the planet. We’ll have to take the emergency gate. Transmitting coordinates. I want you to secure that gate at all costs.”

  “Aye aye, admiral. Coords received.” After a short pause, the captain added, “We detect a civilian fleet headed toward the gate. Somehow, they know of its existence and its location. If they continue to accelerate, they’ll beat the fleet to it.”

  “Hail them and tell them they’re not authorized to use that gate,” the admiral ordered.

  Hunt obeyed.

  “What are you saying, captain?” the leader of the civilian convoy replie
d to him. “This gate is our only means of escape.”

  “I repeat, you’re not authorized to use this gate,” Hunt said in his usual cold tone. “You’re interfering with a military operation. Change course immediately.”

  “I can’t believe this!” the civilian leader cried. “Our world is lost. We’ve nowhere to go. We’re not asking for your authorization. We’re jumping through that gate, period.”

  Hunt contacted Winsley, reported that the civilian ships refused to comply, and asked for further instructions.

  “We can’t let the civvies activate that emergency gate,” the admiral said. “It has limited energy reserves and will remain open for only two minutes, then the wormhole will collapse, and our fleet will be trapped in this system. We lose this fleet, we lose the war. You’re authorized to use force, if necessary. Stop that convoy!”

  Adrian could hardly believe his ears. He called the captain and asked him what he intended to do. “Obey, of course,” the answer was.

  “What happened to the admiral?” Adrian asked. “The Winsley I knew would never sacrifice civilians.”

  “Raak’naar,” the captain replied darkly. “Raak’naar happened, and his bloody holy war. Sorry, doctor, but I have no choice.”

  Hunt ordered Riley to fire a warning shot from the ion canons. She obeyed. The canons sounded like metal pistons hitting an electrified plate.

  Then Hunt hailed the civilian ships again and said, “I repeat, change course immediately, or we’ll be forced to disable your thrusters.”

  “We’ll never surrender to the Biozi, captain,” the civilian leader replied. “We won’t let them re-assimilate us. We’d rather self-destruct our ships. We’ve families, children on board. Hundreds of naturally-born children. Do you want the deaths of twenty thousand people on your conscience?”

  Adrian held his breath, wondering whether the captain would carry out his order.

  “Lieutenant-Commander Lance, target the thrusters of the civilian ships,” Hunt ordered, his voice blank.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” the civilian snapped. “This is mass murder!”