by Marc Stevens
“Unknown, Commander.”
“Don’t give me that crap! I want the numbers!”
“Twenty-two percent.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. At least it wasn’t a single digit. “What about the missiles and fighters?”
“They will be a distraction but should not be a major threat to the Daggers. The point defense weapons are more than capable of defeating the weak shield readings I am detecting on the Quill fighters. The missiles are loitering out front of the fighter screen and have powered down their drives to conserve energy. They will be incapable of targeting the Daggers while making a maximum power attack run.”
“Okay, this is how it’s going to play out. I want you to turn us around and make a full-power approach at the target then shut down the phase drives. Make enough maneuvers while we are coasting to take us off our original heading. I want Tria and Klutch to come in at an optimal attack vector while I go to full power and drive through the missile and fighter screen. I will go weapons hot and shoot up everything in my path. That should get me noticed by the capital ship and draw its fire. When its shields drop to minimum, Tria, you and Klutch hit them at the weakest shield readings Justice can find. Fire as fast as the main weapon will cycle. If the shield comes down, give them all of your antimatter missiles and then get the hell out of there.”
Klutch would have none of it. “Commander, it was my idea to make a diversionary frontal attack! You wish to claim all the glory for your clan and I must protest!”
The Troop Master was full of it. There would be no glory in being vaporized if the Quill managed to hit me with their main weapon.
“Klutch, this is not the time to question my authority. I am giving you and Tria a direct order! Now do your duty, Troop Master!”
I could only imagine what it smelled like in the Tibor’s Dagger. Tria had nothing to say and probably knew she could not change my mind. She chose to remain silent. There was no other logical course of action. What needed to be done needed to be done now, before the capital ship got any closer to the planet.
“Justice, turn us back now!”
“Affirmative, Commander. I have formulated a best-scenario battle plan and I am ready to execute on your order.”
“Execute!”
I felt positive Gs as my phase drive went to maximum output. The trepidation I was feeling cancelled out the rotations my gut was making. With all of my heart, I wanted to think that everything would be fine and this would be the end of the Quill capital ship. Even the beast within me was silent. What will be, will be. My holo displayed filled with targets ranging from two hundred small ones to a single freaking big one. I was closing with them at incredible velocity and then the drive went silent as Justice made course corrections to confuse their targeting.
“Commander, the Quill capital ship has changed course away from the planet and is transferring power to its main weapon. The star drive has cut power, and its shields attenuation is increasing.”
My hands started sweating and I gritted my teeth, then a sudden calm came over me. I cranked my neck to the side, popping the kink out of it. Screw the Quill! I will drive this ship right down their throat if I have to!
My point defense weapons opened fire nonstop. The phase drive went back to full power, and I plunged headlong to my destiny.
4
The drive suddenly shut down, and Justice made a hard turn from my current heading just as the Quill fired their main weapon. An alarm sounded in the cockpit, and I was pushed back into my seat once more. We made another looping turn as the nose of the Dagger passed across the target. I squeezed the trigger on my joystick, sending a return gift in the direction of my foes. I saw the blue triangles of my crewmates making hard turns away from the Quill capital ship. They were blazing away at any ship within range. My point defense systems were doing the same. The shield indicator around the massive ship was blinking on my display then returned to normal. Our weapons were pulling the shields down but not penetrating. I cursed and was getting ready to waste a few antimatter missiles.
“Commander, I have detected the transition signature of the Legacy sixty-two light-years from our location!” Justice suddenly called out. “I am turning on an intercept course to get us in communication range.”
My maker must have been watching out for us after all. Another massive burst of energy passed well to our rear as I pushed the phase drive to maximum. The Legacy must have detected our drive signatures because it made a small jump that put it squarely in our sensor range. Xul came up on our comms.
“Commander, I am detecting extremely large energy spikes and thousands of unknown drive signatures. Do you require assistance?”
“That would be an understatement, Xul! Prepare to take us aboard!”
We coasted in and braked hard as Justice pulled each of us into the Legacy. Justice’s primary system took over and pulled the combat data from our Daggers. The Legacy went full stealth as we turned back toward the Quill with the deadliest of intentions. As we exited the Daggers, I went to Tria and hugged her, then turned to Klutch and put my arm around his big, wide shoulders. He had a very unpleasant odor about him, but at the moment, it made no difference to Tria and I.
“Armor up. We are going to be bait one more time.”
The crew gave me a questioning look, but did not hesitate to run to the ready room. Xul joined me, and I inquired as to Coonts’s condition.
“Commander, he has undergone the carbon fiber bone enhancement and is currently sedated. Justice said he should remain that way for twenty-four hours minimum.”
I nodded, then told him to get current on the data we collected and get suited up for combat operations. He turned and followed me to the ready room. Tria and Klutch had already shed their uniforms and were putting on suit liners. I sat next to Tria and quickly did the same. Justice came up on the comms net.
“Commander, the Daggers have suffered no combat damage, and I am reloading the missile launchers. You will be ready to depart in ten minutes.”
I stepped up into my armor, and it snugged in around me. The beast within me stirred at what I was contemplating.
Xul walked up to us in his older generation armor and stood waiting for a briefing on my battle plan.
“Justice, is the Legacy’s anomaly weapon ready to be tested?”
“Yes, Commander. The power source and weapon show no faults in my startup test. I have integrated myself with the targeting system, and all indicators show that it should function as designed.”
“All right, let’s go test it on a worthy target! Tria, Klutch, we are going back in the Daggers and letting the Quill shoot at us again. Xul, when their shield power drops off prior to firing their main weapon, I want you to jump the Legacy in close and shoot them in the ass. If the shields fail, we are going to give them everything we got aboard the Daggers. Once we turn away, I want every target of opportunity turned to scrap on our way back out. We will do a quick battle damage assessment and coordinate through Justice for a follow-on attack. If everybody is ready, let’s get on with it!”
I got three thumbs up, and we ran to the Daggers. The padding inside the protective cockpits reconfigured itself to fit our much larger armored bodies. Justice quickly pushed us out into the void, and we went to full power on the phase drives. We joined up in our close combat formation. Data started streaming in to my display, and we saw what we had feared all along, the Quill’s ship had turned back toward the planet and was accelerating.
“Justice, can we catch them before the fire on the planet?”
“Yes, Commander, but be advised they are launching additional missiles and fighters.”
“You think they would have learned by now that their fighters are only an inconvenience and not a viable threat.”
“Commander, the missiles and fighters are heading toward the planet and not in our direction.”
That statement got my blood to boiling. “Justice, start launching our Chaalt interdimensional missiles and have t
hem jump ahead of the Quill. When the Quill are in point-blank range, have them go active and take down as many of the fighters as you can. I can only hope the inhabitants of the planet are still hunkered down because I know we can’t stop all the missiles.”
“Launching now, Commander!”
We finally got the Quills’ attention, and they were turning back to a heading that would intercept us. We flew straight at them and were rapidly closing the distance between us. Justice’s subsystem alerted us that the Quill were shutting down their star drive in preparation to fire on us. The Legacy disappeared from my display, and our phase drives shut down so we could make a course change to take us out of the Quill weapon’s targeting envelope. We nosed steeply down and then turned back toward the target. The Legacy reappeared behind the Quill ship and then jumped away. The shield indicator around the capital ship disappeared, and the monstrous vessel started a slow sideways drift that told me it was mortally wounded.
“YES! Tango Two, Kilo Four, let’s finish the job! You are weapons free!”
“Two!”
“Four!”
We were close enough to the target that Justice gave us real-time video of the capital ship. It looked like a small sun was burning in the aft section. What was truly amazing was watching the back of the ship as it was being sucked into the star-bright anomaly. The anomaly suddenly disappeared, and a huge cloud of debris started trailing out the massive cavity. Justice gave us a sitrep.
“Commander, our stealth missile attack destroyed two hundred and forty Quill fighters and shot down more than two hundred missiles. The Legacy took out an additional one hundred and seventy missiles after attacking the capital ship. Do you want the Legacy to reengage the target?”
“No, Justice. Take out as many missiles as you can!”
“Commander, unfortunately the remaining missiles reached their intended targets. I have recorded more than three hundred high-yield nuclear detonations on the planet’s surface. It appears that the largest continent was the intended target. I am no longer detecting any radio traffic or life signs at that location.”
I closed my eyes and said a prayer to my maker. This was not the outcome I had hoped for. It was a very small consolation knowing the people on the planet would not be a food source for the Quill. A burning rage filled me, and the beast was calling to me for revenge. It would get its wish.
“Xul, you are weapons free, reengage the habitat ship. Tango Two, Kilo Four, destroy all Quill you encounter. No survivors!”
“Two.”
“Four.”
I took manual control of my Dagger and made a low pass over the devasted continent. When I could stomach no more, I climbed out of the now-toxic atmosphere. I headed for the nearest hostile ship and turned the fighter into whirling pieces of scrap. I looked back at the fragments that were once the Quill capital ship. My face contorted into a mask of rage, and I screamed out to no one but myself, “This is just the beginning!”
It took us just over an hour to chase down every Quill ship that had an active power source. For good measure, I used the last of my antimatter missiles on several of the largest pieces of the Quill capital ship. I was so worked up by what the Quill had done that I had Justice launch a comm buoy into the debris field. It would broadcast indefinitely in the Quill dialect. The message stated, “This is the price you will pay for preying upon the weak and defenseless.”
When we returned to the Legacy, my dark mood was still haunting me. It was difficult for me to decide whether or not the fate that befell the inhabitants of the planet was better or worse after we intervened. I was trying my best to put it behind me because the perpetrators of the heinous act were all burning in hell. My crew and I stepped out of our armor in silence. We could not find words that would not have something to do with what we had just witnessed, so we kept quiet. One by one my crewmates walked away, save for Tria, who stood momentarily at the ready room door.
“Nathan, do not anguish over the outcome of our battle. It was the will of our maker.”
Tria’s words, while somewhat comforting, did little to change my feelings. I could not sit and think about it another minute and decided to move on to other matters. The first would be to go to the med bay and check on Coonts. At some point he would want to see all the video and data we collected from our encounter with the Quill. The recovery period he would be forced to endure might be lengthy due to the fact he had such a frail bone structure and physique. It was not a good foundation to build on. He would need things to occupy his mind other than the pain of healing.
When I entered the med bay, I shook my head. I had a feeling the little Grawl had gone overboard on the enhancements. He proved my suspicions correct. Before I could say a word, Justice called to me.
“Commander, Coonts was quite adamant that he should receive many of the same muscle enhancements that you underwent. I cautioned him it would also require the subdermal lamination as well. He insisted I go forward with both.”
I rolled my eyes. One thing was quite noticeable: his head no longer dwarfed his body. Coonts now had broad shoulders and large muscular legs. Once he finally healed, it would take us all an adjustment period to get used to him as he is now. His once-burgeoning ego would most assuredly be inflated to epic proportions. He was sedated, and it was pointless to attempt to talk to him.
I decided to head to the command deck and compose an intelligence report to send to Sael. The massive Quill starship would need to be discussed in detail. There was always the chance she or her people had encountered one before. Tria had no data on it. As I entered the bridge, I saw that only Tria was present. She was standing in the corridor leading to the living quarters with her arms crossed.
“Justice, I want to collate and condense our video and current intelligence so I can prepare a briefing for the Principal Investigator.”
I was slightly surprised that he did not answer me. What was even more surprising was the look on Tria’s face when she stalked across the bridge in my direction. I did not know what to make of it, and it gave me an uneasy feeling. I started backing up.
“Tria, is there a problem that I should—”
She hit me! The totally unexpected shot nailed me right in the gut, purging the words from my mouth. I threw up my hands, in a sign of surrender. I was shocked stupid when she leaned down and heaved me up on her shoulder. She turned and carried me to my cabin, where Justice was courteous enough to open the door for her. We entered, and the door quickly closed. She threw me on my bed and pounced on me like a cat.
It was more than a day and a half before I was able to leave my cabin. I felt weak from lack of food, slightly battered, and lightly bruised, everywhere! The mating habits of the Chaalt entail total domination by the females over their male counterparts. They are, after all, the alphas in their race. I, on the other hand, am like the other sixty-nine percent of males in my species. I like to be in the driver’s seat. This attitude netted me a good portion of my bruises—not all of them, mind you—but a good many of them. Chaalt foreplay amounted to an onslaught of Sha’Leen, and it took tremendous effort to shrug it off. At times she was genuinely shocked by certain human interactions but quickly embraced them all. If it were not for my carbon fiber reinforced skeletal system, I might have suffered a fracture skull and a broken neck. I now have a great deal of respect for the muscular enhancements to her legs. The Chaalt having an extra set of arms also puts the advantage squarely in her corner. The consummation of our relationship was going to be something I would remember the rest of my life. I can say without reservation that the experience was definitely fifty shades of WWE!
I was getting worried. Justice had not said a single word for more than two days. You could address him if you needed something done and he would oblige you, but you would get no verbal response. The AI was eager to analyze what had taken place, but now his speechlessness was beginning to trouble me. I went back to my cabin to privately confront him on my concerns but was unceremoniously ambushed by Tri
a. Talking to the AI was not going to be possible.
On the fourth day, Justice finally spoke, and it startled me and my concerned crew. Klutch and Xul were trying their best to pretend nothing had happened and everything was business as usual. Poor Coonts had awoken in such agony Justice put him under until his body could heal and adapt to the very unnatural things done to it. All in all, I was just happy to hear the AI speak and really didn’t care what the subject was.
“Commander, I have restored power to the IST as instructed by Tria. The Principal Investigator has twelve attempted communications queued in the system. I took the liberty of sending her the data package from our last engagement.”
I turned and raised an eyebrow at Tria. She just shrugged and walked off the bridge.
“Justice, open a secure IST channel to Sael.”
“Channel open, Commander.”
Sael came right to the point, and I didn’t have a chance to get a word in edgewise.