“This way,” I said to Rosita, pointing at the device. “Look, down here. We can get down into this area and lay low for a few hours. This ship isn’t moving to join the main battle, and Mallory is kicking their happy little asses anyways.”
I glanced over at the Flight officer. She had her helmet off, looking down at the Gilbaglian I’d brained.
“Rosita?” I asked.
She vomited.
“Dude.” I groaned, tucking the device into a belt. “What is it with people throwing up around me all the time?”
“Sorry.” She grunted. “I grew up on one of the Earth orbitals. I’ve never seen that much blood.”
I looked down. “That isn’t very much.” I said. “Just wait til we have to take their control center and I have to kill like, a hundred of them. That’ll be pretty graphic. You might want to wait outside.”
“You…you really are fucking everything the high priests said you were, in combat.”
“Of course, fucking of course.” I shot back. “You should see me when I have my whole squad, I’m way more insane and dangerous.” I grinned at her, pulling my helmet off and clipping it my belt.
“What are we going to do now?” She asked, wiping her mouth and snapping her own helmet onto her belt.
“I told you,” I replied. “We’re going to sneak down here, get a little rest.”
My communicator crackled, spitting static into my ear. I adjusted the frequency, and listened closely, expecting to hear some Gilbaglian traffic that our advanced software had picked up and decrypted. Instead, after another moment, I heard my wife’s voice break through the static.
“If you can hear me, please…” She was saying, a pleading note to her voice.
“Valentine here, Admiral.” I said back, projecting my usual calm confidence into my voice.
“Destota!” She shouted, loud enough to make my earpiece crackle. “Are you all right?!”
“Yeah,” I replied, blinking through the pain. “We landed safely. Small welcoming committee, not even any snacks for us. I was disappointed.”
There was a pause. “We were hit from the other side of the system just after we engaged. We’re in a fighting retreat now.”
I chuckled slightly. “Where have we had this conversation before?” I asked, thinking back to the occupation on Vandor, when the fleet had been briefly pushed back and had been forced to abandon my battalion planetside. Then it dawned on me why she was upset, I was not with my battalion. I had one single Phelb pilot and the fleet was not only leaving but outnumbered and fleeing. “Oh.” I said absently.
“Yeah, ‘oh’.” Mallory said, and I could picture my wife rolling her eyes. “Why in the world did you think it would be a good idea to land on that flagship?”
Well…
“It seemed like a great idea at a time when I thought the fleet was going to kick some bird ass.” I replied. “We got a lot of intel on Winged Freedom about the Cetoplin and the Meyges and I wanted to gather more.”
My earpiece crackled once more with static at she screamed at me. “And you couldn’t have fucking waited for Antillon and more of your men!?”
“In hindsight,” I replied calmly. My eyes flicked up as more Gilbaglians ran around the corner. I assessed the situation, drew my pistol and fired twice, killing them both. “It was not one of my better tactical choices.” At least, I decided, I hadn’t endangered a massive group like I had when I recklessly launched us at Earth.
For all my ability, I am frequently reminded that I am still very young. Although there was no real precedent for a Colonel in an entirely new unit, it had previously dawned on me that I could have really used some advice and guidance on some of the decisions I made.
But, my father and most of the senior military had been killed by the fucking Phelbs, so I guess it’s whatever the fuck now, right?
“Not one of your better…” She trailed off with a heavy sigh. “Look, there is literally nothing I can do for you. I cannot get reinforcements to you, and I cannot rescue you.”
I took slight offense at that. Intractable tactical scenario or not, I did not need to be rescued.
“Can you jump?” She asked, her voice slightly fast as she had an idea. “If you go into deep-breathing to conserve oxygen we might be able to pick you up…”
“My pilot couldn’t survive that.” I replied calmly, softly. “Listen, Mallory…”
“No!” She shouted. “No, damn you, Destota, you don’t get to go off, make bad choices and die. The Gilbaglians are terrified of you. And our people love and respect you, not to mention our daughter. We need you.”
“I was going to say…” I began again.
“NO!” She cried, a sob choking her voice. “You have to try and escape. Do something.”
I waited, she didn’t speak, so I began again. “You need to find a way to break someone through.” I said softly. “Get one of your dreadnoughts through and hit this ship. Tell me what you need me to do to make this ship into a wreck we can use.”
“What do you mean?”
I sighed. “Look, Mallory. People keep telling me that I’m the best weapon that Vandor ever had, and now that humanity has. There are others as strong as me, and probably a lot smarter. I’m not good at a lot of things, but I am pretty good at winning. If you think that I’m going to let a few birdbrain idiots stop me from winning this one, you’re wrong. But I will need some help. How much time do you need, and what do you need me to do?”
“Okay.” Mallory said with a sniffle. “Okay, I get it.” For all that she was brilliant, fearless, and awesome…
We were just kids out here fighting a war none of us ever wanted to be a part of. And for the most part, we were winning. But we’d never invaded some other species territory, we’d never attacked battleships, defended a planet, nothing.
Shit, I’d never been a father before either, and that would have been something worth having some advice on, even if not warfare.
“We need you to send the stand-down codes to their weapon systems.” She said quickly. “They have integrated fire control systems on their flagship that link-fires their weapon systems, so that individual commanders don’t have the authority to fire on their own. Not like our ships, okay?”
“Okay, great.” I said, grabbing Rosita’s arm and dragging her forward, pulling and checking the device as I went. “How do I do that?”
“Well…heh, heh…” She said. “You’re very much not going to like this, Colonel.”
Chapter Eleven
---
Aboard Gilbaglian Cruiser
Winged Freedom System
I very much did not like her plan.
Rosita was armed with only a small pistol. I had my sniper rifle and my pistol and my sword. And a bad attitude.
But that was against a fully staffed, fully armed, and probably well trained Gilbaglian flagship.
Hey, I’ve faced worst odds before. At one point, I was the winner of a very important race for my survival against a hundred million other sperm as I raced towards an egg.
What, too much information? Get over it.
Managing to shut down their security cameras in select areas had been highly useful thanks to Mallory walking me through using one of their command devices, which is what I had captured from the Gilbaglian who was now minus a scalp and most of his brain.
We managed to slip into the water reclamation area of the ship, where our motion signals would be blurred by moving water. The downside was that the gravity was only at a third of Earth normal on Gilbaglian ships, so moving around had become slightly difficult.
Mallory had instructed me on how to disable their weapons and then had turned the entire fleet around and faced the second Gilbaglian fleet that had confronted them and was now punching it out with them. She anticipated that the dreadnought Orion’s Fury with her frigate and destroyer escorts would break through in just under fifteen hours, come racing at the flagship and give us a window to get the fuck off the Gilbaglian ship.
/>
We slept in four-hour shifts, each of us sleeping a total of eight hours. Sleep was, of course, mission critical. I often fell asleep in strange positions or locations, once standing upright on the bridge of Eternity. Mallory was capable of the same feats, but since she seldom saw ground or even ship combat, she didn’t usually employ them and found it very creepy when I did.
Rosita and I then spent the next five hours creeping through the ship’s environmental system until we reached the fire-control chamber, located some distance away from the bridge, which was stupid as fuck, but whatever.
We peered through the venting grate down onto the Gilbaglians who were sleepily going about their daily duties, obviously having forgotten that there were two human intruders on their ship.
Which, they hadn’t. Since I had the command device, I was able to ghost our lifesigns to other parts of the ship and switch off cameras and open doors as I needed. It was a wonderful little device that was woefully stupid in its existence, since anyone who captured one could easily take partial control over their ship.
Then again, I suppose no one else had ever been quite insane enough to take over an entire Gilbaglian battleship. By themselves, no less.
Rosita looked at me, her eyes wide and slightly bloodshot from stress and anxiety. “Are you really going to do this?”
“Do what?” I asked. “There’s only about ten of them.” I looked down and counted again. “Okay, thirty. Still, not very many.” I verified that I had my saber at the ready and enough ammo for my pistol available. “Ready?”
“Would you take no for an answer?” Rosita was holding my sniper rifle. Our plan was, as usual, brutal and simple. I would drop in, kill everyone. She would use the handy control-device and put the cameras in a maintenance cycle, and then preform a fake security check on the locks. It would make everything look like a normal routine and give me a route to assault the bridge later on today. “Wait, Destota.”
I paused. “Yes, flight officer?”
“I…I’m afraid. Are you sure we shouldn’t maybe just…surrender?” She asked, tears standing out on her long lashes.
I chuckled. She’d been asking about to surrender for a while now. Not having grown up on Vandor, the idea of surrender was not as sickening to her as it was to me. I’d been impatient at first but had gradually come to understand it was merely a cultural difference at this stage. I reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “Giving in, is what kills people. When you refuse to surrender with all of your heart, that is when you will transcend your humanity. Even in the face of death, never give up.” I said softly.
Her eyes hardened and I knew I’d reached her. “All better?” I asked.
She grinned. “Better, Colonel.”
“Let’s go, then.”
She nodded and depressed a control on the device. The door locks on the walls turned from green to red and the Gilbaglian crew looked up in surprise. Another control depressed and the lights on the cameras winked out.
I dropped through the soft mesh grate feet first. My pistol was in my hand and I fired four rounds before I even touched the deck, dropping six Gilbaglians. I landed, rolled and fired three more times, ejecting the magazine as I popped up behind a chair that was fixed to the deck, and was more of a roost than a chair, on second glance.
I rolled up to my feet, firing twice before the first of the rushing Gilbaglian crew came within range of my sword hand. I slashed and took off an avian head, then twisted my wrist and took off an arm, a leg, and then drove the weapon down through a barrel-shaped torso. Blood splashed across my face, and I looked up at the others, who’d paused in shock. All of them were unarmed, hoping simply to overcome me by sheer numbers.
I roared at them, rising to my feet and advancing. This was not part of the plan, as I’d expected them to fight to the last man.
And the other part that didn’t go according to plan was the hulking security robot that loomed up behind me and appeared to be impervious to the half dozen shots I fired into what appeared to be its face.
“Well,” I said to Rosita as they slammed us to the deck on our knees. “I’m open to suggestions for further plans.” I grinned.
Chapter Thirteen
---
Vandorian Carrier Shadow of Eternity
Winged Freedom system
Admiral Mallory Valentine
The Eternity rocked as another blast from Gilbaglian particle cannons hit the shields of the big carrier. She tilted up briefly around fifteen degrees, retro-thrusters firing to counter the force of the blast, and then responding with a triple-powered salvo of their own.
Eternity’s reactors pulled power straight from the vacuum of space. The massive engines absorbed the energy from the reactors, and the weapons were primed directly from the engines.
So, when Eternity fired, she did so with an angry fury.
When I’d been given command of the ship, at just twenty-two, as we began to evacuate Vandor from the Phelb invasion, my crew and I had been green. Destota was fond of telling me that we were, all of us, still very green.
He wasn’t wrong, our entire military was so green that we could have won the inexperienced Olympics. Fortunately, such a depressing contest didn’t exist. So, we’d settle for fighting a war in that we were unqualified to fight in.
What is life without a little bit of a thrill ride now and then, though?
“Admiral,” It was my flag Lieutenant. She was younger than me by a few years, fresh off the refugee ship from Vandor when we’d departed Earth a few days ago. “The Gilbaglians are advancing on our flank again.”
That was a problem, considering we were outnumbered eight to one presently. The Gilbaglian ships were doing their best to encircle us. Their smaller ships, frigates, destroyers and cruisers were absolutely no match for their Vandorian counterparts, but their carriers and battleships were at least as heavy tonnage as Eternity could put down. We only had six of the carriers in the fleet, which carried a dozen frigates each, and four dreadnought battle ships.
“Move Saisei forward of the frigates for a concentrated shot on that battleship.” I replied, forcing a calm I did not feel. “We need to give Destota a little more time to take out their flagship.”
“Ma’am, do you believe it would not be wiser to just leave him behind?” She asked, hesitant.
“Probably would be.” I agreed. “But we don’t leave anyone behind. Least of all my husband. Even if he is incredibly stupid.”
Saisei raced forward and time seemed to pause for a bare instant as the big dreadnought seemed to take a deep breath and then unloaded a full salvo from her entire arsenal at once. I raised my eyebrows at the holographic display as the powerful ship ripped the Gilbaglian battleship apart like tissue paper. The Gilbaglian ship tumbled backwards in space, out of control, and exploded as soon as it contacted one of its sister battleships, destroying that ship and damaging five others as well.
“Well shit.” I said. “I didn’t expect that.”
“Admiral, incoming transmission from the Gilbaglian flagship!” The communications officer cried.
“On the main screen,” I replied, excitement flooding me. Destota would have been almost forty minutes ahead of schedule if it was indeed him. “Destota is that…”
My blood ran cold.
My husband and his pilot were bloodied, held on the deck of the flagship on their knees. Two hulking Gilbaglians stood guard behind them, their wrists were clearly bound.
Destota’s head came up and he smiled at me.
“Human fleet!” Came the fluting voice of a Gilbaglian. “We have captured your greatest warriors on our ship, trying to subvert us from within. And yet, only failure greeted them. Stand down your forces and surrender your vessels to us and you will survive as slaves to the Gilbaglian Empire.”
I gripped the railing of the console I stood at so hard that I heard the plastic begin to crackle and give way. I couldn’t speak.
Something flashed in Destota’s eyes and he grinned,
then lashed out one wrist. It didn’t move to strike, instead he held up a clenched fist.
“Don’t you know?” He asked the speaker. “Vandorians never die.” He turned his hand over and revealed a detonator. I recognized the Vandorian design.
Then it hit me what he was about to do.
Time stretched out like an eternity in front of me. My legs felt rubbery and my ears sounded like someone had struck a heavy tuning fork deep in my skull.
Little Alyssa felt my sudden flood of stress and wriggled in my womb, not liking it one bit.
I wanted to close my eyes, but I couldn’t. Tears spilled down my face instantly, even as Destota’s big fingers squeezed the detonator.
He didn’t believe in defeat. He believed that even in death, he could be victorious, and in this case he was right. The slaved firing controls for the entire Gilbaglian fleet would suffer if their flagship was suddenly destroyed or taken off line. It would be total chaos for full minutes until they transferred the flag to another ship, and then even longer as they rebooted the fire control systems. Minutes in space combat might as well have been hours, and Destota’s modified intelligence gathering mission had called for him to destroy the ship if that was his final option.
The last thing I saw of my husband was his grin as the screen turned to static and was replaced a moment later by an image of the flagship disintegrating in a fireball.
My world shattered into billions of pieces and I slumped to the deck, screaming my pain at the galaxy. Tears poured from my eyes and I hugged my legs to my chest as I did not attempt to restrain the pain of just having watched the bravest man, I had ever known die in a violent fireball.
The sacrifice wouldn’t be wasted. The encircled Vandorian fleet would turn from its ‘retreat’ and rip the Gilbaglian fleets apart. The goal was not so much to win, but this was going to be a battle of attrition, and that was a battle that my fleet would be well-suited for.
Requiem of a Nightmare Page 14