So Close to Home

by Galen Surlak-Ramsey

“Right when the Nodari attacked,” I said. “That stupid little drone said I should portal out of there, which didn’t exactly make a lot of sense—even when I ended up teleporting back to the apartment. I must’ve tapped into the one here on the ship and bam! Of course, that doesn’t explain why I wasn’t able to use it again…”

  “A combination of low batteries and range, I imagine,” Daphne explained. “Also, according to the notes here, the onboard portal device can only form small wormholes capable of traversing limited amounts of real space.”

  I tilted my head. “Which means what, exactly?”

  “It means you can effectively teleport about a thousand kilometers. Anything beyond that will be wildly inaccurate,” she said.

  “Well that’s not too bad,” I said. “Better than nothing.”

  “And there’s no time traveling, either.”

  “Which is probably for the best,” I replied.

  Tolby grunted. “Definitely for the best.”

  “Also, the ship batteries only have enough stored power for three jumps. After that, they will take some time to recharge, which is why I suspect you weren’t able to hop around like you were before,” she added. “But combined with the other thing you have at your disposal, namely an entire platoon of Kibnali warriors, I estimate you have a decent chance at disabling the Nodari battleship’s interdictor systems, thereby allowing the escape of all Kibnali ships.”

  “A boarding action?” Tolby asked, his face full of angst. “Even our most elite commandos rightly feared to do such things against their ships.”

  “Well, have fun with that,” I said.

  “I’m so glad you think it will be an enjoyable experience, Dakota, since you’ll be the one making it,” Daphne said.

  “What? Me?” I said, sticking my index finger into my chest. “I’ve already done my space marine duty for my lifetime. Aside from the fact that I’ll be way more of a liability than an asset, someone has to fly the ship.”

  “That someone can be Jack, as I’ve mirrored the controls as closely as I can to ships you two are familiar with,” Daphne replied. “But unless you go with the party, I’m afraid we won’t be able to use the portal device to extract the team since their location will be unknown.”

  I flopped back in the chair and blew out a puff of air. “Of course.”

  “We could ask for volunteers, Dakota,” Jainon said. “No one would expect you to undertake such a high-risk assault, especially after all you’ve done.”

  I blanked out for a few seconds, but eventually, my eyes drifted over to Tolby. Oddly, or maybe not so much, he looked neither worried nor fearful. “You will always have my respect and admiration, no matter what you choose,” he said. “But if you do go and do not return, know that I’ll make sure the entire Universe never forgets the woman you’ve become.”

  I probably should’ve been more serious at that moment. But hey, if you’ve heard my story up until this point, you’d know that would never happen. “No, bud,” I said, a grin slowly forming on my face. “If I don’t make it out, what I want is a Viking funeral.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Naval Battle

  “Full steel ahead!” I said with a dramatic wave of my hand.

  Jack, who recently acquired control of our ship, threw me a puzzled look. “I think you mean full steam ahead.”

  “No, full steel ahead,” I replied. “You know, like you’re driving your ship made of steel forward into battle.”

  “No, that’s full steam ahead.”

  “It is not! What the hell kind of sense does full steam ahead make, anyway.”

  Jack smirked. “Pretty sure it’s full steam ahead, as in the old steam engines.”

  “Pfft, show’s what you know,” I said with a dismissive wave of my hand. “They never used steam engines out in space. That’s ridiculous. It wouldn’t even work.”

  “Not in space, Dakota, on the water,” he explained. “As in what they used after they progressed from sails.”

  My mouth twisted. My brow furrowed. My brain tried to come up with some sort of rebuttal. “Yeah, well…” I stammered. “We have more important things to do than fact-check your hypothesis.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Jack replied, looking ever so smug. At that moment, I probably should’ve been more irked at his attitude, but I’ll be damned if I couldn’t help but laugh like a schoolgirl. Guess the guy was starting to rub off on me again. Did I just say that? Let’s pretend I didn’t.

  I directed my attention back to the short-range scanners. The Kibnali flotilla had engaged the Nodari battleship. It was hard to tell what was going on, but there was a slew of tiny dots flying between the bigger dots on the display.

  “Daphne, now that we’re going along with this insane suggestion of yours, any chance you can expand upon what exactly we’re going to do once we beam over there?”

  “Displaying general battleship schematics now,” Daphne replied. A moment later, a wireframe representation of what we were going up against popped on my view, and honestly, even on the computer screen as a tiny little model, the thing looked downright terrifying. It easily spanned two kilometers, bristling with cannons, and if I was reading the schematics right, which unfortunately I was, its armor was as thick as any planet’s mantle. “I should point out that the layout I’m displaying is an estimation at best. According to records, no two Nodari battleships are the same.”

  “Your records are accurate,” Jainon replied. “This is more due to the fact that they are just as organic as they are metallic. After every battle, they adapt to what they fought, especially as repairs are made.”

  “Cripes,” I said, taking it all in. “We’re going inside that thing? How many Nodari are running around in there?”

  “Forty-one thousand two hundred, if memory serves,” Jainon said.

  My eyes went so wide, it was a wonder they didn’t burst from their sockets. How I hated that number! I mean, I’ve already said how much I detest the number four, but forty-one thousand two hundred is even worse! As I said way back when, four sounds like a faster-than-light drive when it’s about to go supercritical, but forty thousand feels like…well, like forty thousand nails being dragged across a blackboard. Just thinking about the number is almost enough to send me into permanent seizures.

  “Could we please agree never to use that number again?” I asked, gripping my sides and practically falling out of my chair.

  “I would also recommend not using that number,” Daphne replied.

  “Oh, good.”

  “Because the number for this particular Nodari ship is probably closer to fifty thousand.”

  “Fifty?”

  “The lower bounds of the estimation, yes.”

  “Now it’s the lower bounds?” I buried my face in my hands and said a silent prayer. I still was far from the religious type, but hey, it couldn’t hurt. “What’s the upper bounds?”

  “Eighty thousand. Give or take twenty thousand,” she said. “On the bright side, I’ve almost finished adapting the Progenitor array subroutines. We should be able to hail the Kibnali flotilla in thirty seconds.”

  “Well that’s a plus,” I said.

  “Provided they don’t blast us apart before that,” Daphne added. “We will be within firing range of their ships in ten seconds.”

  My face blanked. Surely I’d heard wrong. “Say again?”

  As soon as the words left my mouth, our ship lurched to the side, and from that point on, it felt like we were in a tiny prop plane caught in a Cat 5 hurricane. “Oops, forgot to move that pesky decimal again,” Daphne said. “We are within firing range. I have initiated appropriate evasive auto-maneuvers.”

  “Gah!” I yelled, gripping the armrests. “Why are they shooting at us? We’re the good guys!”

  “They don’t know that,” Tolby said. “We’re just a blip on their scanners headed straight into battle.”

  “A blip, no doubt, that’s not responding to any IFF systems,” Jainon added. “So if they c
an’t identify us as friend—”

  “We’re foe,” I finished.

  A brilliant flash of orange exploded on the bow of our ship. Our ship jolted and then took a nosedive. Thank god I was strapped in, because I lifted so hard against my restraints, that if they hadn’t been there, I’d surely have punched a hole through the ceiling.

  “Incoming flak. Shields are currently holding,” Daphne said. “I doubt they will take another direct hit and stay operational, however.”

  “I vote we don’t get hit again,” I said.

  “I second such a course,” Tolby said.

  I threw Jack a glance. “Got that?”

  “Aye, aye,” he said.

  Another flurry of explosions erupted around us, and once again our ship violently shifted side to side before entering a tight corkscrew. I was pretty sure we pulled enough Gs that my brain took up temporary residence in my gut.

  “Hailing Kibnali flotilla now,” Daphne said once our flight leveled out to more tolerable levels.

  Jainon practically leaped out of her seat to handle the call. “Ceasefire, 39th Flotilla! This is Jainon Makabe aboard the Empress’s Fang,” she said. “We are not the enemy!”

  Much to my utter delight, the withering fire directed toward us suddenly shifted back to the Nodari battleship. A crystal-clear reply came through the comm a moment later. “Empress’s Fang, this is Rear Admiral Misumo of the 39th Flotilla,” he said. Though we had no visual, his voice sounded rough and deep, and I pictured an old, salty Kibnali with muscles as big as tree trunks and more battle scars than I had birthdays. “What is the status of Nagakuro? Sensors are jammed, and there’s not much we can see.”

  “That’s because there’s not much left to see,” Tolby said. “The Nodari have obliterated everything down there.”

  “Huh, that’s strange,” Daphne interjected.

  “What’s strange?” I asked.

  “I’m detecting a massive power spike coming from the Nodari battleship,” she said. “If it continues on its projected climb for the next five seconds, the ship will blow itself apart.”

  “Misumo! Full overload on your shields! Now!” Jainon yelled.

  Her warning came too late. A half dozen yellow beams leaped from the belly of the battleship and converged before shooting forward and slamming into the lead Kibnali cruiser. Shields flared, and even as far away as we were, I had to shield my eyes from the blinding light. The damn thing might as well have doubled as a supernova.

  “What the holy hell,” I said, turning back around. “It’s got a mega death laser thingy?”

  “Yes,” Jainon said, blowing out a tense puff of air. Somehow, she managed to crack a smile. I guess when you’ve seen that much death, dark humor comes naturally. “Though we have a slightly more technical name for it than ‘thingy.’”

  “Empress’s Fang, this is Commander Ito,” came a new voice on the comm. “What the gods’ names was that?”

  “A mega death laser thingy,” Jainon said, still holding her forced grin. She sucked in another breath before recomposing herself. “Apologies, Commander, we’re a little shocked.”

  “Unless you have a better idea, Empress’s Fang, I’m ordering a full retreat,” Ito said. “We can’t repel firepower of that magnitude.”

  “Negative, 39th,” she said. “A retreat is not possible. That ship is running an interdictor field. You’ll never make warp.”

  Ito growled. “Then we fight to the death and make them rue the day they thought they could attack the Kibnali Empire.”

  At this point, I snapped. I’m not sure why, maybe just the idea of sitting around waiting for us all to be blasted apart didn’t sit well with me. “Daphne, pipe whatever plans you’ve got cooked up for us into my helmet,” I said, undoing my buckles and popping off the seat. “Jack, keep flying and keep us alive. Jainon on the guns. Regardless of how ineffective Kibnali weapons are right now, it seems the Progenitors were anything but helpless. So maybe we’ll get lucky and knock out that superweapon mega laser thingy before it has a chance to fire again.”

  “Is that the tailless giving orders?” Ito said, sounding as shocked as ever.

  “Yes, and this tailless is going to save your collective fury butts,” I said.

  “By doing what?”

  “Boarding that massive hulk and detonating the storage batteries with some well-placed explosives,” I replied, reading Daphne’s plan off my HUD. I then gave Taz a quick belly rub before grabbing my rifle off the back of my seat and rushing for the exit. “That’ll take out half of their weapons as well as their interdictor generator.”

  “You’re not boarding anything without me,” Tolby said, chasing after me.

  “We’ll take Yseri, too,” I said. “She’ll probably want payback.”

  “I will need Yseri here,” Daphne said.

  “Why?”

  “Someone has to build the bomb,” Daphne explained. “I have located the appropriate components inside the ship, including how to fashion a crude timer and detonator, but I am unable to put it together myself.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Being the one who gets to blow them all to hell will probably sit best with her anyway.”

  We were nearly out of the door when Jainon called out to me. “Dakota!”

  “Yes?”

  “May Inaja bless you with good fortune.”

  I smiled. “May her luck be your luck.”

  I raced down the hall to the portal room. As it turned out, the portal room was the area near the aft of the ship with the large raised platform in the middle. Along the way, I opened a comm to Yseri and filled her in. I probably could’ve told her all the details better and faster if Jack hadn’t had to take evasive maneuvers again, thereby slamming me into the wall once, twice, and then three times again.

  “Wormhole creation will be available shortly,” Daphne said. “I hope you’re at the portal room.”

  “I’m about to be,” I said, hitting the button on the wall that opened the last door between me and it. When the door slid open, my eyes took in three dozen heavily armed, armored and determined Kibnali with Yseri standing front and center.

  “A tailless is leading us into battle?” one of the Kibnali scoffed.

  I was about to say something when Tolby, who was borrowing a chest piece off a wounded soldier on account of his having been melted previously, beat me to the punch. “Leading, no? That is your duty. But she is the Empress’s fang and claw, Major,” he said, eyes fiercer than I’d ever seen before. “I assure you, she will not disappoint the honors bestowed upon her.”

  “A bold claim,” the major said. “I hope you’re right.”

  “I know I am,” Tolby replied. “Get her to the ship’s batteries, and we’ll blow them back to the deepest parts of the void.”

  The Kibnali gave a short nod of approval. “So be it,” he said before spinning around to face his troops. “Black Talons, on the ready!”

  A chorus of thirty-eight roars went up, which was immediately proceeded by a slap of rifles against armored chests.

  I hit the button for my faceplate, and it slid and locked with a loud click. The screen flickered a moment as the self-diagnostic systems ran.

  Once it was finished, Daphne spoke into my ear. “I’m locked on to your suit. Ready? Ten seconds until the device is charged.”

  “Relatively speaking,” I said. “I’d rather be in a hot tub.”

  “So would I,” she replied. “Or I think I would. Never really been in one, you know? Electrical systems and all.”

  I threw a nervous glance at Tolby. “We’re going to make this, right?”

  “Damn right we are,” he replied, slapping me on the back.

  A round, hazy blue portal sprang to life in the center of the platform. “Time’s up! Go before it closes!” Daphne ordered.

  Before I knew it, Tolby and I were charging through with our rifles at the ready, surrounded by a slew of Kibnali warriors.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Boardin
g Party

  The inside of the Nodari battleship was nothing like I had expected. Instead of unyielding floors made from nano-fiber metallic weaves, typical of any spacefaring vessel, what we stood on was an amalgam of flesh and metal. The countless ribs ran up the walls to the top of a peaked roof. Tendrils hung from the ceiling, each with a bulbous sack on the end and dotted with flecks of glowing orange light, and clouds of vapor hung in the air. Side passages came from all sides, as well as the top and floor, making it feel much more like an organic network of blood vessels and organs than anything else.

  “Hotter than a furnace in here,” one of the Kibnali remarked.

  “No kidding,” I said as the group fanned out across the hall. For the moment, we were alone, but there were four nearby hatches—oblong, iris-looking things—as well as two directions the hall stretched in. Trouble could come from anywhere, fast, and from multiple directions. “Daphne, can you still hear me?” I asked. “We’re in.”

  “Still reading you loud—” Her voice cut off when there was a loud explosion. Everyone in the platoon instinctively ducked, and I happened to plaster myself on the floor.

  “Daphne? Daphne! What’s going on?”

  “That’s not good,” she said. “Hope we didn’t lose anything important.”

  “Cripes, what are you on FaceSpace, getting your jollies vague booking? Tell me what happened!”

  “Hull breach in the forward cargo bay,” she replied flatly. “Some of the supplies kept therein have escaped into the vacuum. Tell you what, whoever didn’t tie those down per protocol is going to be in big trouble.”

  “Dammit, Daphne, I thought you were going to say the engine was on fire,” I said, shaking my head. “You scared me half to death.”

  “What if there was a hot tub in those crates? I bet you’d be sad then.”

  I growled, and glancing around, it looked as if my frustration with the eccentric AI was shared by the Kibnali marines accompanying me. “Daphne, we don’t have time for this. What are we looking for?”

  “Right,” she said. You need to find a long, glowing yellow thingy that’s encased in dark purple thingies, and sort of looks like an old sewer pipe with tiny handlebars every five meters.”