He left with the others, and Müller looked to Jaswinder Yrden.
“As soon as we are refueled, we will go after this patrol ship.” He lowered his voice, and said, “I do not rate high our chances of destroying it but, with luck, we will at least damage it. As I told you, we have a full load of munitions. We will use them well.”
Yrden extended her hand, and Müller took it.
“Stay alive and rejoin us, Major.”
He only smiled at that. Yes, he would stay alive if he could, but doubted that outcome.
“Board your ships!”
* * *
Jensen didn’t much like Hauptmann Schmidt, but he took him and several others with him back towards the fighting. Schmidt looked like a real problem. He’d seen men like him before, with nothing but killing on their minds. They usually didn’t last long – which he didn’t see as much of a problem in and of itself. The fact that they often took others down with them caused the problems.
“What’s this, Preswick?” Jensen asked their guide as they passed a large hatch.
“Repair shop. Big, open. We can fit a dozen shuttles inside. But it’s safe – no way in from where they are.”
Jensen just smiled at that. “Let’s check it out, anyway.”
The big door slid back, and Jensen sent Innis and Macintosh in. They moved quickly, quietly, and took advantage of all the cover available, which appeared considerable.
“Down!” Macintosh yelled.
A shot echoed throughout the huge space, and everyone hit the deck.
“No way in?” asked Jensen.
“We didn’t think there was.” The man looked ill. “We can’t let them keep it. The tools in here could allow them to cut through bulkheads at will if they get them operating.”
Jensen pushed out his mirror and looked around. A lot of people were going to die in here, he thought. However, the space made it just the place for the hunting rifles. Some even had scopes. Colonel Westorn didn’t know what he’d gotten himself into. Westorn couldn’t win – not any longer, not with the Germans and the others coming. But he could make it bloody.
“Bring as many of the troops as you can spare,” Jensen said.
He grinned at Hauptmann Schmidt. “Der Feind wartet darin,” he said.
“Sehr gut,” the man replied, eyes burning with hatred. “Gehen wir!”
One way or another, they would end it here. Westorn would lose, and Christine would live. He hoped to live with her, but if he had to die to make her safe, then so be it. He nodded at the German, and then turned to the others. “Like the man said, let’s go.”
“Frank!” the call came from behind him, and Jensen turned about.
Corporal Tieff ran up to him, almost out of breath.
“Broke … through,” he gasped. “Maybe a … dozen of them.”
Jensen felt a cold weight in his stomach. “Where?”
Tieff gained control of his breath. “We think they’re headed towards the Command Centre.”
And that’s where they had sent Christine.
Jensen spun about, crawled into the repair bay. “Innis, Macintosh, come back. We’ve a job to do.”
When the two had slipped back out, he turned to Tieff. “James, you, me and these two, we’re going after them.” He turned back to Schmidt. “Hauptmann, wir haben eine Problem. Wir,” he indicated the four of them, “müssen weg.”
“Sorgen Sie sich nichts. Alles ist in Ordnung.”
Don’t worry? Jensen could do nothing but worry. He figured he knew just who led the team that had broken out. But he smiled at Schmidt and nodded.
“Let’s go.”
Tieff had recovered enough by that time to jog along with the others.
“We have some fighters following them, but they keep leaving a rear guard behind, delaying us. If we take that rear guard out, they leave another. They can’t have too many left, but I don’t think we can stop them in time.”
TWENTY-SIX
ANTON FIGHTER-1
Müller looked around the cockpit. He had lived many hours here, and here he would die, doing what his country had trained him to do.
“Fueling complete,” Baumeister reported.
They went through the checklist, as the station pumped the air out of the hold. Then the automatics gently thrust them out, and back into space – where they belonged.
“Fighters 2 and 3, form on me. Fighters 4 and 5, you will remain to protect Haida Gwaii from other attack – or come after us, should we fail.”
He gave a short burst, and Fighter-1 left the station behind. Telemetry from Haida Gwaii’s detectors flowed to them, and Baumeister inputted it to their navigation tank.
“There he is. And there’s Venture. She’s still accelerating!”
“We’ll never catch her, but let us try.”
“Fighter Force, on five, maximum acceleration.”
The thrust threw them all back into their seats. He had never experienced maximum acceleration before, and it threatened to incapacitate him. And that was no way to fight a battle.
“Fighter Force, reduce to 80% acceleration.”
When the burn ended, the small group of fighters hurtled towards the oncoming patrol ship, after the out-gunned and severely outmatched Venture.
“There’s Jacoby.” Erica reached over and took his hand in hers. The other fighter force approached Haida Gwaii.
“His people must surely turn the tide,” Müller said, wanting to believe more than believing. “And then our people will have a new home. It is something worth dying for.”
He supposed that those on Venture had come to the same conclusion. He almost laughed, but the bitterness of having come so close and yet being denied the opportunity of life prevented that.
One aged freighter and three shuttle-fighters against a fully-armed, modern patrol ship? He couldn’t see this ending anyway other than badly. But they might just damage the patrol ship enough to allow Haida Gwaii and their friends to find a new life.
The fingers that held his own squeezed. He turned his head and smiled at Erika. Then, together, hand in hand, they watched as the icon for the warship rapidly neared. The old freighter’s one beam had found the patrol vessel’s shields, but could not penetrate.
Too late, my love. We found each other too late.
“Prepare to launch all missiles.” He hoped that their shield-killers would have the strength to take out shields on a dedicated warship, that their guidance systems could defeat the enemy’s ECM, that the sheer number of missiles would overwhelm the ship’s active defences.
For Hirsch, Schmidt, Kiergarten, and the rest, they would give it their all. Some had to have a chance to live, even if they had given up theirs. Here, now, he and his were Protectors; even Old Paulo might agree and no longer proclaim them Destroyers.
“Launch.”
* * *
HAIDA GWAII
Christine Burnett sat in a chair in the Command Centre – supposedly one of the safest places on Haida Gwaii – and looked at a magazine that someone had left on a chair – an actual paper magazine. She hadn’t seen one in a long time. Her subscriptions came straight to her reader in digital form. Her escort had told her and Arch to wait quietly. So they did, looking around from time to time at the tense people who manned the various boards.
The black-haired woman turned from the control panel.
“So, you’re Dr Burnett,” she said. “I’m Jaswinder Yrden. Pleased to meet you. Now, tell me why Ken thinks you’re important enough to bring here, for us to have given you and your soldiers sanctuary, even if this unpleasantness hadn’t made your soldiers very valuable?”
“Jazz,” came the voice of the man next to her. “Don’t bite her head off.” He turned and smiled at her. “I’m Johannes Yrden. Right now, Captain of this little lot.” He glanced back at his station. “Ferguson, can’t we get a little more out of the gravetic drive? That cruiser’ll be here before we get far enough away from the Moon to jump.”
“Faster w
e go, the more we’ll have to slow down again before we can jump, Johannes.”
“Damned if you do; damned if you don’t.” Johannes shook his head, and turned back. “Ken says you two are scientists, and he told us some things, but we’d like to hear it from you. What field did you train in?”
Christy liked the captain better than the woman, and directed her answer to him, beginning to explain about sleep-learning. She pulled out her prospectus – a last souvenir of her institute – from her ready case, and prepared to hand it over to Jaswinder. The Yrden woman seemed more likely to understand the value of the science, she herself being a scientist. “Would you like to read my pros—.”
She stopped mid-word when the hatch to the passageway opened and gunfire sounded. Everyone spun around as three soldiers strode in, weapons up and pointed at the control room personnel.
“Well, what have we here?”
Christy went still. Colonel Westorn had arrived with two of his men.
“You two, guard the door,” he said to someone out of view. “We’ll end this from in here.”
His eyes went to Christy. “So, Doctor Burnett, I see you’re the cause of some of my difficulties. Still, I’m pleased you escaped from Topside One.” His lips turned up in a smile that sent a shudder down her back. “This time, though, you’ll do exactly as I say, when I say it, or,” he pointed his weapon at Arch Grant, “this man will die very painfully.”
The rifle then shifted to Johannes Yrden, but his eyes went to Jaswinder. “You will put out a call for your people to lay down their weapons. Otherwise your husband, here, dies.”
“Don’t do it, Jazz,” Johannes said, tensing himself for a launch forward.
“He dies, and then we evacuate the air from various parts of this station,” Westorn continued, shifting his gaze, looking at Captain Yrden with contempt. “Go ahead; try it, if you think that’s your duty.”
Christy fingered the prospectus in her hand, and then began to nervously roll it up tightly. She gripped it in her right hand. With mind suddenly calm, she stood.
“He means what he says, Ms Yrden. He will do this. I suggest that you obey his every command as quickly as you possibly can. That alone will save lives.”
Westorn smiled. “Smart woman.”
“You made a minor mistake, Colonel.”
His eyebrows went up a fraction.
“I didn’t come to this station of my own free will; I didn’t cause you any difficulties. And I’m not here, in this room, as a free woman, either. I’m here as a bargaining chip for your soldiers and Dr Grant. Go ahead and shoot him, if you like.”
Arch’s eyes widened, but he wisely didn’t speak as Westorn’s rifle turned back to him.
“I’m happy to see you, Colonel.” She took a step closer. “Jensen and his crew brought some of the bio-back suits and some of the control equipment with him. They used that – and me – as payment to get them asylum. Dr Grant made the suggestion. I don’t like being used – not by you, and certainly not by them. But I had a contract with you; I can trust you, even if we don’t see eye-to-eye on everything.”
She turned to face the hapless Grant. “I think we can use him – I could use him – but he’s not vital.”
“Dr Burnett, please,” Arch’s hand, palm up stretched towards her.
“Shut up.”
She saw Westorn begin to smile, his finger tightening on the trigger. So, he loved to kill in person. She turned quickly, using a technique she knew well, but had never even practiced. The tightly rolled prospectus struck end on, crushing Westorn’s larynx. He dropped his rifle, hands going to his throat, even as Christy let go of her improvised weapon and grabbed Westorn’s pistol from his holster.
She spun as the two soldiers turned at the sound of the rifle hitting the deck, and shot each one through the centre of his forehead, the shots sounding shockingly loud in the enclosed space.
Westorn, choking for breath that would not come, fell to the ground, and stared up at her, a question in his eyes.
“Your program, Colonel,” she told him as Johannes Yrden and two other control room personnel scooped up the fallen weapons. “Very effective, as you know.” He stared at her, comprehension coming to him. “Goodbye, Colonel.”
She spun as the outer door opened once more, gun coming up, finger tightening on the trigger.
“Christine!”
“Frank!” She lowered the gun.
Jensen looked at the downed soldiers. “You?”
“His own program defeated him in the end. Ironic, wouldn’t you say?” The agent persona started to recede, and she couldn’t keep a tremble out of her voice – or from her hands, and she gratefully surrendered Westorn’s pistol as Jensen’s hand came over it. He pulled her tight to him, and she relaxed.
“It’s okay, Christine,” he murmured into her ear. “It’s okay.”
He released her.
“He’s mine, Frank,” Corporal Tieff said.
Another shot sounded.
Christy shook her head. “He was already dying, James. Why?”
“Not a good way to go, Doctor, suffocating.” But his eyes told a different story, and she saw Jensen give Tieff a short nod.
“Thanks.” Though what Jensen might thank him for, she didn’t know.
Jensen turned to Jaswinder Yrden.
“Ms Yrden, I’m leaving two men outside. I want to get back. We need to finish this.”
Jaswinder looked down at the dead colonel. “Won’t this finish it?”
“No, it won’t. They’ll fight to the end – leader dead or not.”
Christy sat down, feeling shaky. Two of Jensen’s men began carrying the bodies out of the room. With them gone, she felt better.
“And this is a product of your sleep-learning?” Johannes asked her.
She nodded. “The colonel perverted it. I created it to do what I told Ken. I’d never even fired a gun before coming up to Topside One.” She shuddered, the agent part of her receding even further. “This is only the second time.” She shuddered again. “And now I’ve killed three men.”
Jensen took up the tale. “We gave the good doctor a small dose of it, to show what Westorn had done. When she shook it off – as we had – she promised to help us get away.”
“Frank, here,” she found that she liked using that name, “can change a field node in zero-g without problem. He had one one-hour session to embed that.” She smiled as the two Yrdens exchanged a meaningful look. “That’s what I developed for the Army. I never even dreamed that Westorn could use it like he did.”
She reached out, and Jensen’s hand took hers. She loved the warmth of it, the feel. But Johannes stared intently at Jensen.
“You can operate in zero-g?”
“We all can,” he said, indicating Tieff and the other soldier still in the room.
Johannes smiled. “And the colonel’s men?”
“I don’t think so. We only started zero-g training when we got up to the station. Westorn’s fanatics didn’t get that training. They’re dirtside soldiers – like we were.”
Johannes’ smiled widened. “From here, we can control gravity throughout the ship.”
Christy didn’t understand, but Jensen did, for he began to smile, too.
“I’ll go and get my people ready. The Germans – at least the shuttle crews – will have had zero-g experience, too.” He turned back to Christy, who had come back to her feet. His arms opened, and she stepped into them.
“Wait for me.”
“Forever,” she replied, and sank into his hug. Too soon it ended, and Jensen left with one of the station personnel.
Jaswinder Yrden looked at the NavTank while her husband conferred with others about going zero-g.
“What’s happening out there?” Christy asked, as she looked at the icons on the detector screen.
“I’m not sure. It looks like our people have at least delayed the patrol ship. We should have time to go to hyperspace before it can reach us.” She turned to C
hristy and said in a formal tone, “Welcome to Haida Gwaii, Dr Burnett. Welcome home.”
Author’s Note
(Or, the trouble that authors can make for themselves.)
Now, to do this story justice, we have to go back to “Pelgraff”. In “Pelgraff”, I made mention of several things that had happened before Armageddon on Earth – some 450 years prior to the events on Pelgraff. These details added depth to the story, and included mention of Jaswinder Saroya, who discovered the ‘J-Channel’ in hyperspace; sleep-learning; and soldier-fanatics, amongst others.
The Jaswinder Saroya character interested me, and I wrote a short story: “Courtesan”. But she kept bugging me, asking me to tell the rest of her story. I finally relented and added to the short story to make it a novel. Then, after writing and publishing “Courtesan”, I received several requests to do a sequel. I thought, why not? Thus came the idea for “Not With A Whimper”. I should know better. Thinking only gets me in trouble.
I started out in 2011, figuring I’d write a book that dealt with the other details from Pelgraff, which would take me up to the final Sol System war. As it dealt with Armageddon, I decided to call it, “Not With A Whimper”, as in, the world ended with a bang, not with a whimper. I figured it would grow to about 90,000 words (my longest previous novel just topped 100,000 words). It went very quickly, until I reached about 80,000 words (novel length in itself) – but I then realized that I was only about half-done, and I had so many different threads that I wasn’t doing any of them justice. It became just too much, so I let it lie fallow while I concentrated on other works.
But I kept coming back to it, wondering how I could make it work. Finally, I made the decision: I would take certain threads out of the uncompleted story, fill them out, and make them into their own novels. I figured about 4 books each one of about 60,000 words – short novels, shorter than Courtesan, which had 70,000 words.
Not With A Whimper: Destroyers Page 22